Éphémère
by Yilena
Summary: Marinette's main worries had been getting food and a place to sleep, not an ongoing feud between angels and demons. After acquiring ancient weapons, she takes it upon herself to protect her childhood friend, even if he doesn't recognise her. AU.
1. 01

**AN: **I'm going to say this here: I don't have any experience with children, these situations aren't all going to be realistic, and we're just going to go along with it, okay? Otherwise I will have a breakdown and cry. A lot. There's going to be a lot of violence, blood, and murder in this story—even from the _first_ chapter. That means a lot of character death, even from the mains. I'm warning you now. Also, this has three chapters planned in total. Remember, it all goes downhill from here.

_Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Chat Noir © Thomas Astruc_

There was someone in the house.

He wasn't supposed to be back so soon, and neither was anyone else. At least, not from what she'd seen the past couple of days.

Marinette had thought that she'd given herself a small amount of time to take what she needed, but that wasn't the case at all.

She'd barely filled her bag.

A pained breath escaped her as she put the bag on, the straps digging into her exposed skin, and she quickly trudged to the door to the garden, trying to hurry with her steps. She wasn't as fast as she'd have liked to be, and her sluggish body wasn't doing her any favours, so when she bumped into the chair in the middle of the kitchen, she felt tears starting to prickle in her eyes from frustration.

There was a noise, but she was already running out of the door, crossing the garden and ducking into the woods that were on the border of the property.

It was proof that she'd wandered out far from the city.

No one came after her, thankfully. Her heart thumped nervously in her chest for a while, looking over her shoulder to see whether anyone caught up to her, but nothing happened.

It made her happy.

It was proof that she'd be able to look after herself, wasn't it? There had always been the questions, the concerned looks, others not letting her do anything because she was too young—but she had food, her belongings that she'd taken away, all of it stashed safely.

Being alone wasn't all too bad, not like she'd been told it would be.

It was because of the successful first time that she went back to the house again, almost a week later. She'd made the mistake on eating a lot of the food too quickly, her stomach cramping in protest from the sudden fullness, but the location was one of the safest yet.

She could watch from the outskirts of the forest to see whether the owner was there.

It was exciting.

She'd always been warned against stealing, that the result of being found out would only make everything worse for her but—but she was doing _fine_.

There wasn't any interruptions that time.

She'd wandered further away from the others a little while a go. It had been at night, Marinette nervous with her heart thudding awkwardly in her chest, but she just—all she wanted to do was to get away, to be somewhere where she wouldn't have to look over her shoulder and see violence or arguments.

It hadn't always been that way, of course. The people she'd found herself with—hesitant to call family—had taken care of her, warmed up and taught her things. She trusted them slowly, not wanting to see someone leave her again, but some had managed to worm their way into her life.

Like Nice Lady, for example. Marinette could barely remember her life without her, but Nice Lady had the habit of disappearing for weeks, sometimes more, and Marinette didn't latch onto anyone else while she was gone.

But while Nice Lady was gone that time, things had gotten out of hand.

Since creeping away in the night, her fears of being alone were lessening slightly from just how easy it seemed to be. The sound in the evenings scared her, yes, but it was better than the shouting from others. After the last fight she'd seen, and her belongings that had disappeared, she'd wandered off when the weather was warm.

It was an old man that lived in the house by the woods. The house was large, all the lights never on at the same time, and the garden was long with the large building that was out back. She saw some other children entering it with him during the day, but she wasn't sure what they were doing.

The windows were too high for her to see inside.

But when it rained heavily, the trees not providing any protection and the ground turning squishy and horrible, she'd gathered up the courage to trudge to the building out back, curiously approaching the door first to see whether it was left open.

She almost cried out in glee when it really was.

The old man had to be forgetful.

Marinette didn't dare to turn on the lights, having been told that lesson by others, and she tried to position herself so she wasn't visible by the door.

It was a lot better than sleeping outside, that was for sure.

And when she'd wandered back the second night that it was raining, her confidence soared.

She grew more daring when she wasn't caught sleeping there the second time. Sometimes, she stayed for longer in the morning, staring at the large windows at the top, inspecting the room in the daylight, taking in the large room that had scuff marks on the floor.

There was another room, but it was locked along with a large locker (much larger than any other locker she'd ever seen, all by itself).

There wasn't much to do during the day.

Marinette explored through the woods sometimes, or she followed the trail out to the road, wandering down to the town to dart into the alleyways. She recognised a few of the people that she'd lived with previously, but other than asking her whether she was okay, most of them didn't bother her too much.

It was a surprise to find out that Nice Lady was back.

She had bruises on her face and a few scratches, but her voice was as soft as her touches, and Marinette naturally gravitated towards her when they were together.

It wasn't hard to say that Nice Lady was the nicest person she knew.

Although she didn't say where she was staying, wanting to keep it to herself—not to share, to have it _taken—_she did make a promise to come back into town every day to talk to Nice Lady.

Marinette chose not to bring her backpack into town with her. At times, Nice Lady would share food with her, which she gratefully accepted, while others they looked for some together when their stomachs growled. She knew that she had a good thing at her current location, with the forgetful old man that forgot to lock his backdoor, but telling just one person could mean that others would come.

She'd seen it happen before, after all.

She wanted to protect what was hers, for once.

Nice Lady brushed her hair when they were together.

"It hurts," Marinette complained, her head jerking back with almost every brush.

"It won't if you do it more," was the advice she got in return.

She grumbled underneath her breath, repeating the words in a more higher-pitched voice.

But the weather was getting hotter.

Her face had gotten burnt from staying out under the sun for too long, and the skin of her shoulders had started peeling uncomfortably.

The blanket that she used at night only made it itch more, frustrated tears welling in her eyes whenever she accidentally brushed up against something and hurt herself, and ended up crying more than she would've liked.

Nice Lady pushed her on the swings to try and cheer her up, but the chains felt too hot to touch, so holding on was too hard.

The ice cream she had after was nice, though.

There were times when she wandered into the parks further, venturing alone without someone else she knew accompanying her, and she tried to play with other children at times, but it—it wasn't what she really knew. It was fun at times, but the others her age were always pulled away by their adults quickly, or she was asked weird questions that she didn't quite know how to answer.

There was only so much that she'd learned.

But school didn't sound that bad, not from what she'd been told. There had been a few other children that were a few years older than her, or even those that were almost adults, but they'd never really stuck around long, not like the others.

"Why can't I school?" Marinette had questioned, a few months ago, back when Nice Lady had just disappeared for a while.

The response she got was that if she wanted to go, she'd have to leave—leave everyone that she knew, and all the horror stories that she'd been told flashed through her mind. While some had tried to tell her that it would be a good thing, for an adult to take her in and play families for her, she'd heard so many conflicting stories that she didn't know what to do.

The only thing she really knew was that she trusted Nice Lady more than anyone else.

But that didn't mean Marinette wanted her to come and share her new make-shift home. It was selfish, the thing that she was told not to be too often, but she—it was _hers_.

Nice Lady always disappeared, but she was just glad when she returned.

Marinette had learned with others before, had another girl to play with, but she'd gone a few months prior along with a few other members of the group. There had always been questions, some asking whether she wanted to go with them, but she didn't—she didn't _know_ them well, not really. While they gave her toys sometimes, took care of her when she felt bad, it didn't mean that she'd wanted to leave the remnants of the group that were all that she could really remember.

At least, until the fighting escalated.

She thought she was doing well on her own, somehow. She'd stashed away her ratty sleeping bag, her blanket and other belongings hidden with her bag, and she'd found a nice hiding spot for her food and everything else while she wandered off to the town for the day.

It was all thanks to the forgetful old man.

But others didn't agree with her so much.

"This really isn't a place for a child," Nice Lady said as she brushed her hair again, tugging at the knots. "You're still young, there's—there's a place out there for you, you know."

She'd heard that before.

Marinette crossed her arms stubbornly as her response.

"Don't give me that," she was chided. "You'd be able to have a family, maybe even a dog. Don't you want that?"

She sniffed. "I don't like dogs."

"You don't like the one that almost bit you," she was corrected. "But that was just—just a stray, honey. They're not all like that."

She liked what she had. Her skin felt itchy, but it was better than the shivering in the winter, and she didn't have to share it with anyone else in the evenings.

Other than the burned skin, it was a nice routine that she had going. Nice Lady—who'd constantly remind Marinette of her name, but it was too hard to pronounce, so she continued to call her what she wanted—got her hands on new books for the two of them to read, and she even offered for Marinette to stay with her in a place she'd found to stay.

Regardless of whether that meant outside or not, Marinette didn't want to share again.

She didn't come back the day after saying no, scared that it would be taken away from her.

Nice Lady didn't bring up the subject again, much like the previous times that it had happened. No matter how much Nice Lady tried to insist that it would do wonders for her, she never pushed her for it—she never pushed Marinette to do anything, really.

"I'm not mother material," Nice Lady said with a laugh when Marinette had won their debate on what to read that afternoon. "I always give into to you too easy."

Marinette didn't say that she always asked Nice Lady to stay, but she always disappeared. It hurt to know that when she came back she had bruises and looked worse than before, but the affection that she gave her wasn't something she wanted to give up.

So, she held that in, happily sitting beside Nice Lady as they started to read.

It all came apart quite quickly.

Nice Lady went away again.

She gave Marinette a kiss on her forehead, a promise that she'd be back soon with a present for her, but all Marinette could do was frown and stop herself from asking her not to go.

She always did in the end.

The weather was still hot, the sun blazing in the sky, and she tried to stick to the shade as much as she could. Her belongings were still untouched in their hiding spot, and she slept almost every night in the old man's garden building—which she still hadn't quite figured out the purpose of—a routine that she was slowly getting attached to.

It helped that he still never locked the doors.

But it made her wonder why no one else was taking the opportunities that she was. Stealing was a common thing, wasn't it? It was something that people got punished for if they were caught, but it was necessary—

When the day came that she did get caught, it wasn't by the old man.

"What are you doing?"

Marinette fell down, backside hitting the floor and her hands touching the dirt as she stared up at the person standing in front of her, startled.

They laughed.

She continued to stare, wide-eyed.

But it wasn't really a they, not really. It was a boy, small like her, his clothes free of dirt and hair as smooth-looking as Nice Lady wanted her to have.

He crouched down in front of her, smiling. "Are you playing a game?"

It was her normal reaction to glance over his shoulder, trying to see when an adult would come to tug him away from her. No one liked people playing with her, not for long.

And yet, he just giggled when she continued to stay quiet. "Is it fun?"

But he—it wasn't a space where someone was supposed to be.

Marinette scrambled back, trying to hide where she kept her backpack behind her. It wasn't something that she wanted anyone to see, not when they'd take it without a second thought. She'd worked so hard to get what she had, to continue living in the easy-going life that she'd found, so for someone to appear in front of her?

It made her feel nauseated.

"Is that a sleeping bag?" he questioned, peering over her to see where she really had stuffed her sleeping bag in with her bag.

She lurched backwards, covering it with her body.

He tilted his head in confusion.

Her heart was thumping loudly in her chest, the sound hard to be ignored, and she could only stare at the boy, terrified of what could happen. He—he could tell someone that she was there, couldn't he? That would mean that she'd have to wander back to the others in town, to admit that she couldn't make it on her own without them—

But she'd seen fights before. Wasn't the situation she was in what they'd fought over? Their _belongings_?

And as she stared at him, noting the way he was just kneeling in front of her, not reaching out or doing anything else, she realised that she really didn't want to hurt him.

It wouldn't really do any good, would it?

"Do you live here?" he asked, expression lighting up visibly at that. "I do! I mean, in the summer, yes. I come here to stay with my grandfather because he doesn't like the city, but I've heard things, you know? Whispers. I know that's not really the reason—oh, do _you_ know him?"

It was so much said all at once, that even if she wanted to reply, she wouldn't know where to start.

He frowned. "I did it again, didn't I?"

She had no idea what he was talking about.

"You can tell me to shut up," he said joyfully. "Not those words! They're bad words. Let's pretend I didn't say them, okay? I really want dessert tonight. It's hot."

Marinette continued to stay sat awkwardly on the floor, hands touching the dirt below, trying to cover her belongings behind her.

He started to open his mouth to say something else, but he comically turned his head around when there was a loud call of, "_Adrien_!"

"That's _me_," he whispered, quickly standing up and smoothing out his outfit. "I have to go!"

There was barely any time before he started to run back from where he'd come, going through the small trail that it had taken her so long to find. He didn't pause in his movements, running through without giving her a second glance, but it was still enough for her to realise that she needed to change her hiding spot.

Someone knew about it, after all.

When she saw him again, he looked just as clean as the last time.

It was in town, while Marinette was sat on a bench in the shade, one of the newest books Nice Lady had gotten them perched on her lap. She'd been too busy looking at it before someone to stand in front of her, the shadow making them noticeable.

"It's you!" were his opening words, a bright smile on his face. "Remember me? I hope you do, I really think we can be friends since we live so close together now!"

She promptly closed her book.

"I'm Adrien," he said, happily sticking a hand out towards her.

She stared.

His gaze flickered between his hand and her face, eyebrows scrunching together in confusion. "No?"

She really didn't know what to expect from him.

"Friends shake it," he said, demonstrating shaking his own hand with his other. "Like this, see? And friends that are only just meeting do it, too. That could mean us."

But when she continued to stay silent, he frowned.

"Am I being rude?" Adrien asked, putting his hands on his hips. "I am, yes?"

She just didn't understand why he was talking to her at all. They'd met in the woods, on the outskirts where she kept her belongings, and yet he'd readily approached her in the town, unlike all the others when they'd been caught together.

Where was his adult?

Her first words to him were, "Why?"

He brightened at that. "Why?"

She frowned.

Adrien beamed. "You can talk!"

It had never really crossed her mind that she hadn't said a word to him before.

"Oh, this is _awesome_," he whispered, clenching his fists in front of his chest excitedly for a moment. "You live next door, right? Right?"

She furrowed her brow.

"That's what my grandfather said!" he said, nodding his head. "That means we'll be so close all summer! You're my first friend here."

_Friend_?

And when he enthusiastically nodded his head once more, she realised that she'd said it aloud. "Friends!" Adrien confirmed, excitedly swaying in front of her before he dramatically paused. "But—but I don't know your name."

She swallowed. "M-Marinette."

"_Marinette_," he repeated, butchering the pronunciation, smile growing wider as he said it another time, clearly pleased with the development. "I'm being bad."

She blinked.

"I'm not—not supposed to be here," Adrien whispered, putting his hand around one side of his mouth, as though it would stop the sound getting out. "But I'll see you again, right?"

And with that, he was off again, running down the street before entering a building. The only different between that time and the last was that he paused halfway, turning around and enthusiastically waving at her before continuing on his way.

But everyone always disappeared—Nice Lady, the girl that had read with her, others in their group, so she wasn't expecting too much.

She didn't think she'd see him again.

As always, the old man that lived in the large house—alone, she presumed—continued to have children follow him into where she slept, all of the children excitable and visibly happy to go inside. The only difference to the previous times she'd seen it was that Adrien was there, holding the old man's hand as they wandered across the large garden.

She stared.

The windows were still too high up for her to peer in and see what they were doing, but she was as curious as ever. The scuffed floor and lockers were all she had to go on—what could the old man be teaching them in there?

Rather than going into town, waiting for Nice Lady to return, Marinette bravely climbed one of the trees to sit on a branch, shifting until she got comfortable on it to wait and see how long the old man would be inside.

She didn't really have a good sense of time, but when the sound of cars started to appear again before adults came out of them, appearing along the fences as they wandered down to be closer to where the children were, that was the sign that it was over.

Adrien didn't go with any of the new adults.

He continued to hold onto the old man's hand, the two of them going back into the large home together through the door that Marinette knew was never locked.

He'd said grandfather before, but she'd never thought it would be _there_.

But he—he'd said that his grandfather had mentioned her, right? Adrien had assumed that she lived next door because of him, and that knowledge made her feel sick.

She slipped down onto the floor clumsily, her palms stinging from the awkward fall.

That meant the old man had seen her, hadn't he? She knew that there had been noises the first time that she'd gone into his home, but no one had shouted after her, and the following times had been so—so _easy_.

But she'd been seen, and the worst things were supposed to follow when that happened. She'd heard so many stories, been told so many warnings, but nothing of the sort had happened, had it?

She'd continued on peacefully, slipping into the garden building in the evenings, taking any food and drink that she needed from the kitchen when the old man was gone, and wandering into town without many questions being directed her way.

She sniffed loudly.

It took her two days to work up the courage to approach the backdoor to the kitchen, trying to see whether it was really left open after the old man had become aware of her.

The noise of the handle was almost deafening as she moved it.

Her eyes watered in confusion.

It wasn't—it wasn't normal, was it? Everyone had warned her that being alone was hard, but she'd managed to make quite a nice life for herself on her first try.

The lights were off, but she knew that already. In the beginning, she'd used the backdoor when the old man had gone out, but she'd grown bolder and went in a few hours after the lights had turned off before retreating back to the garden building.

The door didn't creak as it opened. The house was as clean as ever—as clean as Adrien's clothes—and when she opened the fridge, it was as full as ever, prime for the taking. There was enough that taking a bit wouldn't be noticeable, something that she'd almost perfected over the amount of time she'd been stealing from them.

But it wasn't as smooth as the other times.

"Marinette, right?"

She dropped what she was holding onto the floor loudly.

Startled, she jumped away, the door of the fridge still open and acting as a light, and she was terrified as she took in the sight of the old man that she'd only ever seen from afar.

He was leaning against the doorway of the kitchen, arms crossed with a frown, and it confused her even more than he wasn't shouting or telling her to get _out_.

The backpack that was by her feet was quickly picked up, and she clutched it to her chest as she took a step backwards, only hitting her back against the door of the fridge. It wasn't a smart move, but her heart was racing, staring with wide eyes as the old man continued to look at her, not saying anything.

When the silence was broken, it wasn't by her.

"Adrien's in bed," he said, lifting his chin up to gesture to the ceiling above. "It would be best if you're quiet."

She gulped.

With a step into the kitchen, the old man pointed towards the stools by the countertops. "If you don't want me to call the police, sit down."

The world was familiar, one that she'd been warned against.

"Come on." His voice was gruff. "I'd rather get this over and done with, don't you?"

There wasn't really much she could do, was there? Even if she ran and managed to get away, it would be too dangerous to keep coming back. The sight of the old man, who was so casually talking to her, meant that she'd lose the home that she'd found, lose the building that she slept in every single night.

And it was all because of Adrien, wasn't it?

Her feet didn't touch the floor when she finally managed to sit on the stool the furthest away from him.

"Now," he started, clearing his throat. "Since you've been living on my land for a while, want to tell me why?"

Her lower lip wobbled.

-x-

Aloys, as he introduced himself as, treated her like she saw strangers treating unknown dogs.

She didn't know how to feel about it.

After telling her that he knew that she was on his land all along, that he'd purposely left the door open to try and entice her in to get her supplies, she'd just started sobbing from being scared of him. Marinette had no idea what he wanted, not when he was going against what she was taught—they were supposed to want to get rid of her, not try and lure her in.

But after giving his name and saying that Adrien would be staying with him for the summer—confirming what she'd already known—he slowly got up from his seat and went to a cupboard, bringing out a small box from inside of it.

Then, he slid it over to her on the countertop.

"For you, kid," he said gruffly.

She stared down at it, confused.

And that was it, really. Aloys stuffed his hands into his pockets and wandered away, leaving the light on in the kitchen that he'd put on after she'd finally sat down on the stool and listened to him, and left her alone.

She took a few minutes before leaving.

He hadn't said anything about getting off his land, nothing of the sort, but she still looked over her shoulder to see whether any of the lights were on in the house before she went into the garden building.

It was the same as ever, but it felt different.

He knew she was there, definitely. Aloys was encouraging her, even.

Opening the box revealed individually packaged food of all sorts, ones that wouldn't spoil any time soon. They were the same as some of the ones she'd taken from the bottom cupboards, the ones that she could actually reach, and it made her wonder whether he really knew all of the things she'd taken all that time.

She'd really thought she was doing okay by herself.

But—but someone was looking out for her, right?

Nice Lady would've known what to do. She would've known what to say to Marinette, how to advise her, but all Marinette could do was stare at the food, wondering whether it would fit in her new hiding spot and be safe with the rest of her things during the day.

She really wasn't doing it alone, was she?

The doors continued to be left open.

She saw Adrien playing in the large garden, Aloys close by either sitting in a chair or standing, always keeping an eye on him, and Marinette found herself watching them sometimes. It was something close to what she had with Nice Lady, that was for sure, and there was always that tugging feeling of wanting something that she couldn't.

Nice Lady still wasn't back.

Marinette stayed later than normal in the town, sitting on a bench and waiting to see whether she'd really appear. A familiar-looking man had come to talk to her for a little, but she stayed silent, minding her own business, and he gave up after a while.

She didn't want to go back to them.

Even if Aloys was aware of her from the beginning, he wasn't doing anything that she'd been warned about. She wasn't getting into a stranger's car from the promise of candy, wasn't staying anywhere dangerous—

She was okay.

A knock startled her awake from her sleep.

"Kid?" was called out, and it took her a few seconds to recognise the voice.

With a glance above, the light coming through the high windows proved that it was morning. Had she slept past the normal time? She'd never been caught before, hadn't had him come to knock on the door—

Aloys called out again, "Kid, you in there?"

Her response was to stuff her belongings into her bag, quickly putting it on her back before she cautiously approached the door. He hadn't opened it, but she knew that he was standing just outside, clearly knowing that she was inside.

So, why wasn't he coming inside? It was his property—she was the one intruding, wasn't she?

She cracked open the door a little, stepping back from being startled as Aloys pushed it, the gap big enough for him to see her.

His expression was blank. "You've got ten minutes before the parents get here. Unless you want to be hauled off, I suggest you get out of here."

Her breath caught.

"Ten minutes," Aloys repeated, looking her in the eyes before he cleared his throat and started to walk away, back up the trail across the garden and into the large house.

She watched him go.

That wasn't the last time she saw him.

Marinette was sitting on her bench once more, waiting for Nice Lady's eventual appearance as she stayed in the shade, and much like the last time when Adrien had approached her, it was the shadow over her that alerted her that anyone was there at all.

Adrien grinned happily, showing his missing teeth. "Hi, hello, hey—I mean, _hey_, you. Marinette. That's you."

Aloys appeared before she could even reply, gently taking Adrien's shoulder in his hand and tugging him towards him. "I told you not to bother her," he muttered, making a noise close to a sigh when Adrien looked up at him and just continued to smile.

"It's Marinette!" Adrien exclaimed, excitedly gesturing towards her.

"Yes," Aloys confirmed, barely showing any emotion. "And she's reading a book, unlike you, you little terror."

Adrien giggled.

"Come on, leave the poor girl alone," Aloys said, tugging Adrien along without actually dressing her.

Adrien waved at her unlike they were out of sight.

It was so strange, like something she'd dreamed before realising it wasn't really true, and she didn't quite know how to react to that. She'd seen adults pull away other kids before, not wanting them to interact with her, but it had never—it hadn't been like _that_ before.

It was even stranger when she went into the garden building that evening to find a bowl of some sort covered in foil. She touched it curiously, not knowing whether it could really be food like she was hoping it to be, and when she saw that it really was a meal—not a packaged one, one that had actually been _cooked—_she was even more confused.

Why would anyone leave it there?

The only person that knew she was there was Aloys, the same man that had tugged Adrien away that afternoon, not wanting him to talk to her. For him to give her the food made her nervous.

She didn't know what he wanted from her.

The following days came with more gifts, all within the garden building. She'd managed to leave in the mornings before Aloys could come and warn her that parents were coming, but she never quite knew which days that would be, not really. It was just her wanting to be gone before someone else could come across her.

Be quiet and out of sight was what she'd been taught.

And yet, Aloys placed another plate of food in the building. It was a meal that she couldn't take away and hide with the rest of her belongings, something that she had to eat then and there on the spot, and bottles of water and others drinks soon started to follow.

He included an umbrella for her, one that was brightly-coloured and would stand out terribly.

She took it.

She didn't understand, not at all. Aloys went against everything she was told about people, but he was still—he was _giving_ her things, even if he had dragged Adrien away.

When a meal appeared in the morning, when she'd cracked open the door and intended to wander into the woods to stash her belongings, she picked up the plate in confusion.

It came with a note, but she wasn't confident enough to read all of it.

She could recognise her name, though.

After a few moments of wondering what it could mean—whether it was an invitation, or a letter to tell her to _leave—_Marinette worked up the courage to approach the house. It was only after she'd finished the food before stashing her backpack in her usual place, then she trudged to the backdoor with the plate in her hand, gripping it tightly as she stared at the door.

Was she even supposed to knock?

In the end, she didn't have to.

Aloys' face appeared in the glass, peering out into the garden before his eyes flickered down to see her standing there.

She stiffened.

He didn't smile, though, didn't say anything to welcome her.

Instead of that, Aloys opened the door wide enough for her to fit through and said, "Adrien's already at the table."

And after he'd taken a few steps, he looked back to see whether she was following, raising his eyebrows before gesturing past him, past the doorway of the kitchen that she'd never dared to venture past.

She ran out the backdoor instead.

Nice Lady still wasn't back in town, and when she wandered to where the others were, they took one look at her and told her that Nice Lady hadn't been spotted.

She might've cried a little.

Aloys gave her food in the morning the following day, the same note attached to it. She ate it slowly, gripping the piece of paper in her hand, and only dared to go near the backdoor to put the plate beside it.

She didn't stay to see whether he'd appear to see her.

It continued for a few more days before she took off the foil in the morning, only to see that the plate was empty.

Marinette frowned.

There was no denying that she'd feared that the food would stop, that it would only last a day or two, but to see the bare plate—she didn't know how to feel.

The note was still there.

It was asking her to go to the house, wasn't it?

But she didn't go.

It wasn't until the fourth day—third with an empty plate in the morning with just a note on it—that she wandered over to the backdoor. She had her backpack straps digging into her shoulders, having not stashed it in the woods, and she lifted up her trembling fist to knock on the door.

The seconds passed by with her heart hammering her chest.

It wasn't Aloys' tall and scary-looking figure that answered the door; no, rather, the door opened without a creak to show Adrien's messy hair, the messiest she'd even seen it, and brightly-coloured pyjamas as he rubbed at his eye with his free hand.

And then, when he saw her, he visibly brightened up and babbled out, "Mari—_Marinette_! You're here!"

She just stood on the spot, unsure on what to do.

Adrien bounced in front of her, appearing to be more awake by the second, before he started to try and usher her inside. "Breakfast is ready!" he exclaimed, not adding anything onto it, but he did continued to make hand movements.

Marinette stayed in the doorway until Adrien started to frown.

Then, there was the sound of footsteps as he wandered out, further into the home that she'd ever been, and when a figure returned, it wasn't Adrien.

Aloys didn't seem surprised to see her. "You here for food, kid?"

She looked down at the empty plate in her hands before back up at him.

"It's in the dining room," he said gruffly. "Come on, then."

She followed slowly.

-x-

It started off small, meals in the morning for a few days before Adrien begged to play with her afterwards. Aloys just nodded, saying that it was fine, and Marinette was utterly overwhelmed the first time she was taken upstairs with Adrien's hand in her own.

He took her to a large bedroom, one with toys scattered all over the floor. Aloys was a few steps behind them, there for the whole time. She didn't know whether he was there to watch her, or if he truly spent all that time with Adrien.

"You're the nicest," he said, passing her what he dubbed to be his favourite toy. "They hit me with their swords, even though they're not supposed to. Isn't that _mean_?"

Marinette only stared at him, wide-eyed.

"But you don't." He grinned, the same teeth missing as the previous time she'd seen them. It was silly to think that anything would've changed so quickly, but with how her life had been altered, she—she'd expected something, anything. "And you're so _cool_."

He continued to say things like that.

Marinette was just waiting for him to leave, just like everyone else. But as the days passed, and she continued to eat breakfast with him and Aloys—who indulged Adrien's every want from the looks of it—she slowly started to relax around the two of them.

She slowly started to stay for longer each other, either playing with toys or listening to Aloys read the two of them a book (which always resulted in Adrien climbing onto his lap and trying to take it for himself), and she shyly started to talk, mostly when she wanted to ask what a word meant.

Aloys was better than Nice Lady at explaining.

But whenever she grew quieter, thinking about how to leave, Aloys would clear his throat and say, "It's time for Marinette to go home now."

Aloys walked her to the backdoor.

Sometimes, he'd remind her about the umbrella and say that it was going to rain the next day, or that it would be hotter than usual, so she'd want to stay out of the sun for too long.

And if she wandered into town afterwards, searching to see whether Nice Lady had returned or not, there was always dinner covered in foil on the doorstep of the garden building.

Her chest felt warm.

It was the most she'd been cared for.

There had been some, like Nice Lady, that had always checked to make sure that she was okay, to share their food with her, but they'd—they'd never actually cooked the meals consistently, worrying about her because of the weather. It was an unfamiliar feeling, one that she didn't quite understand.

The following morning, when Aloys opened the backdoor to let her in, her voice cracked as she asked, "Why—why is this happening?"

For a moment, she thought the man wasn't going to say anything before he cleared his throat. "Don't question it, kid."

That was all she really got in return.

She started to stay until it got dark outside.

There were times where Adrien didn't want to play, asked her what she wanted to do instead, and Marinette would shrug, not quite knowing what the options were. She never really felt comfortable to help herself to anything—if she was thirsty, she kept that to herself, even though she kept the backpack on her back the entire time that she was there.

She was starting to like them, but she didn't want to part with her belongings.

And when she was there long enough to eat breakfast and a snack of Adrien's choice in the afternoon, then came the question from Aloys whether she wanted to stay for dinner, too.

She'd said no the first time, but that meant that she wandered outside with a plate of hot food that she'd have to eat alone, rather than in the presence of Adrien's bubbly personality or Aloys' confusing attitude.

So, she accepted.

The first time Adrien whined that she wasn't allowed to stay over—for a sleepover, as he put it—Aloys had made a noise of his tongue before saying, "She has her parents to get home to."

It just made her frown.

Didn't he know that she—she didn't have any _adults_?

And yet, she kept being invited back, given a place to stay in the evenings, and Aloys continued to be different to what she'd been warned about.

When Adrien wanted to play in the garden because of the sunshine, Aloys had passed her a cream to put on her face and arms, saying that it would make it so it wouldn't hurt.

It was little things like that; the food, the umbrella, the way Aloys stayed in the background for the most part, letting her and Adrien interact.

It was so strange.

And as the days passed, with her slowly opening up, talking more and trusting them enough to leave her backpack in the kitchen, along with her shoes by the backdoor, things began to change.

The first time she slept over, it wasn't in Adrien's room like he wanted.

Aloys had insisted that she had to have her own room for her to sleep in, but it happened to be right beside Adrien's.

The room was large, the bed bigger than she'd ever seen, and she was wide-eyed as Aloys pointed out the nearest bathroom and showed her how the lock on the door worked.

Her eyes began to tear up when she was given some of Adrien's clothes to wear to bed. They felt soft, a lot cleaner than anything she had in her backpack, and she hugged them to her chest for longer than necessary.

It was an awkward night.

But in the morning, after she'd slept on the floor since the bed felt too strange to be on, she woke up startled to knocks on the door. It took her a few moments to realise where she was, and she only opened up the door when she'd calmed down.

She left that morning with Adrien's clothes on, clean hair with barely any knots in it—Nice Lady would've been so proud of her—and a container food in her hands as she wandered outside.

Aloys taught lessons of some sort, ones that Adrien attended, but Marinette had quickly shook her head and said that she didn't want to attend when it was extended to her. She just—it was one thing trusting the two of them, but everyone else?

There was a reason she'd watched from the outside for so long.

But that evening, when she'd wandered back into the garden after investigating whether Nice Lady was back, Aloys knocked on the door to the garden building—the gym, he called it, but she liked her name—and asked whether she wanted to come and stay with them another night.

It seemed too good to be true.

She cautiously accepted.

They'd given her so much without explanation, but she wasn't going to reject them. It had taken weeks, maybe more, for her to even start talking to them more, almost as much as she spoke to Nice Lady. The rare moments where Aloys wasn't there to watch the two of them, she talked a bit more with Adrien, but she was too shy to be as loud as him.

Adrien continued to be nice.

He was just—he was so_ nice_.

While Marinette had trouble parting ways with her backpack, not wanting anyone to touch it, Adrien seemed to throw any of his belongings at her, wanting to share. Adrien wanted her to play with his favourite toys, to watch the shows that he loved, and even ask Aloys to make his favourite food, all so she'd understand what he was talking about.

He was bad at being told no, though.

The first time he started crying loudly, it was because Aloys told him that Marinette _couldn't_ share a bath with him.

It was a little bit weird.

But as she started to spend almost all her time with the two of them, inside the house and within the room that she'd been given, she saw a lot more moods from Adrien and Aloys. From Adrien smiling, talking loudly in excitement, to stomping his foot as tears welled in his eyes, to Aloys crossing his arms over his chest and staring down at Adrien with a frown, her grinning widely and causing his eyes to be more wrinkled, she started to see it all.

She felt like she was out of place, but whenever she grew quiet, not knowing what to say, either one of them would turn and direct a question at her.

It was usually Adrien demanding to know if she was going to take his side.

When she cried, she didn't let them see.

It was awkward, but when her eyes welled up and she got up to leave the room, going to the nearest bathroom to blow her nose, Aloys always made sure that Adrien didn't follow after her. And when she took a while, Aloys would come and knock on the door, asking whether she was okay.

It just made her feel worse.

When she forgot about checking whether Nice Lady had returned for over a week, the realisation made her stomach twist uncomfortably from guilt. Nice Lady was everything she wanted in an adult—

She had been, at least.

Aloys was taking that role and surprising her with every passing day.

"Your parents must be so _nice_," Adrien said, vibrating with happiness as she stayed another night at his house.

She didn't look him in the eyes as she nodded.

When she woke up thirsty in the night, still dressed in Adrien's pyjamas (and wearing his clothes during the day, but he never complained), Marinette had finally gained the courage to go down the large staircase, holding onto the banister on her way, before wandering through the home in the direction of the kitchen.

She wasn't surprised by the light in the living room.

When she peered around the corner to see Aloys reading a book on his favourite armchair, it didn't take him long to look up and see her. And rather than his expression smoothing out into a disapproving one, one corner of his mouth lifted into a lopsided smile.

Barely anyone looked at her like that.

"Everything okay?" he questioned.

She nodded, pointing towards the kitchen.

The plan had been for her to drag a stool from the other side of the kitchen to try and reach a glass, but Aloys was more than happy to get up and get the glass for it, and he even filled it up with water before presenting it to her.

She held the glass with two hands.

"You know," he started, his voice sounding as though he needed to cough. "You're welcome to stay here with us for as long as you need."

She chose to stare at the floor.

"I don't know what happened to you," Aloys said, crossing his arms and leaning against the countertop. "But I'm not going to send you away."

But that—wasn't that what she'd always been told? That if she was caught, then someone would call others that would take her, put her in a horrible situation that she didn't want? She'd heard all the horror stories, the whispered words from other children that had been with her overtime, but they'd always disappeared, one way or another.

And even when Nice Lady had suggested that she could find a family—a word that she couldn't really associate with herself—she was still warned about it.

She'd been warned against Aloys and Adrien, hadn't she?

She didn't realise her hands were shaking until Aloys had kneeled down in front of her, putting one of his hands on hers.

Her voice quivered as she asked, "Why?"

It seemed to be a question she asked him a lot.

To her surprise, he chuckled quietly. "You never just take an answer, do you?"

Marinette didn't know what to say to that.

"It's obvious you don't want to be found, kid," he answered, reaching up to run a hand through his hair. "But when you do, I'll be here, okay?"

She didn't know what that meant.

-x-

She didn't go into town with Aloys and Adrien, but she did stay in the house when they went. And when Adrien went to the lessons in the garden building—no longer her bedroom, but she did try to wander in there when she was in the garden with Adrien, only to find out it was _locked—_she stayed inside, sometimes peering out through the windows to see whether all the other adults had gone, trying to count down the time until she had company again.

It was strange how she'd gone from being alone for so long to wanting to be with them.

But they—they were so _nice_.

And even if she lashed out, not wanting to be touched, or didn't want to talk much that day since she was irritated, they didn't turn her away, asking her to leave. Marinette was always given the option to spend the time alone, but Aloys would come after a while, knocking on the door and asking whether she was okay.

He asked her how she was feeling every day.

It took her a while to respond, and when she did, he asked her whether she was happy.

With Adrien's silly comments, his soft clothes on her skin, and the way Aloys hovered over the two of them, trying to see whether they were okay, even if they'd just stumbled on the grass, it was an easy answer for her there.

She was.

And she didn't want that to go away.

When she was told that Adrien would be gone, to go back to his parents so he could return to school—_school—_she absolutely started sobbing.

They always left, didn't they?

Adrien handed her a load of tissues, shoving them in her hands and trying to tell her to stop crying, but it made her sob even more. And as she squeezed her eyes shut, rubbing the palms of her hands into her eyes, when she opened them again, it was only her and Aloys kneeling down in front of her.

He did that a lot.

She didn't know many others that would try and be on her level, and even though Aloys' knees cracked and his body made weird noises when he stood up, he continued to do it with her and even Adrien.

He was really nice.

He looked angry at times, when he was reading and his eyebrows were tilted downwards, but nothing about him was actually _bad_. He had a beard that hid his chin—to which he told Adrien that he did have a chin, it was just covered by the hair—and his hair was so long that he had it in a ponytail.

Marinette worked up the courage to ask him to do her hairs like his.

Aloys was surprised at that, but he agreed to do it. He wasn't as rough with the brush as Nice Lady was.

At breakfast when Aloys mentioned that other children and adults would be arriving for the day, Marinette quietly asked, "What lessons?"

Aloys looked at her pointedly and helped her to phrase her question better—that was something he'd started to do with her, but had always been there for Adrien.

"Why don't you come see?" Aloys suggested.

She looked at him with wide eyes.

It was strange to be in the garden building with someone else, even if it was just Aloys and Adrien at first. Adrien happily ran ahead in the garden, standing by the doors and bouncing on the heels of his feet, waiting to be let inside, while Marinette was cautiously walking by Aloys' side for the first part, so very curious.

The answers she'd gotten from Adrien about what they did in there weren't very clear.

One of the areas she'd never gotten into was unlocked to reveal equipment, and Adrien stood beside her, holding her hand in his and swinging them excitedly as Aloys put mats out over the floor, grunting as he did so.

The transformation of the room wasn't much, but it was more than she'd ever seen.

When the adults and children started to appear, Marinette chose to stand behind Aloys, peering out to see what they looked like for the first time up close. And when they noticed her, she shied away from the other children, sticking to Adrien, but she did hear Aloys saying to an adult that her parents had entrusted her to him for the afternoon.

That came up often, didn't it?

The lessons were—they were _cool_.

She'd only seen moves like she saw in films, never in person. And to see Aloys—who grumbled whenever he stood up too quickly—quickly demonstrate moves and correct those that weren't holding their wooden weapons right, it was such a strange sight to see.

He was good at helping her learn words, but to see him teaching almost a room full of children on how to use a sword was something else entirely.

Her attention was torn between him and Adrien.

She remembered Adrien complaining that he didn't like the others in the class, but no one seemed to really be bothering him. They weren't including him in their talks between techniques, so when Adrien looked towards her during that time, she intentionally made silly faces to make him laugh.

It made him smile.

The lessons were held once a week, according to Aloys, at the same time. She learned to follow the dates on the calender on the wall, able to understand when they were coming up, and she readily accepted the chance to watch the following week.

Adrien dragged her across the garden that time.

The lesson looked as fun as before. Marinette made silly faces at Adrien when the other children were talking, and although he was at the front of the class, he was at the edge, closer to her than before.

It wasn't him that came to talk to her first that time.

Instead, it was another girl, someone that she'd barely paid attention to the previous week.

Marinette looked up at her when a shadow appeared in front, confusion clear on her face, and the girl just stared down at her, no longer with a wooden sword in her hand.

And then, the girl spoke to say, "You look like me."

Marinette didn't know what to say to that.

They didn't talk any more, though. When Adrien came bounding over, the other girl looked at him once before walking outside to leave for the week, and it was all without another word being said.

"Who?" Marinette questioned, pointing to where the girl had walked out.

Adrien shrugged. "I—not sure. She doesn't speak much."

She tried again, later that evening over dinner when Aloys brought up the question of whether she liked the class or not. He was like that; he waited a while for her to give an answer, rather than asking immediately afterwards.

"She looks like me," was what Marinette said when he asked for a description.

It didn't take him long. "Kagami," Aloys replied. "Quiet girl, but she's enthusiastic. She didn't... upset you, did she?"

She adjusted her grip on her cutlery. "Why does she look like me?"

That was how Aloys explained to her and Adrien that people could look different, including pulling up pictures on his laptop to show the two of them. He was patient, listened and answered any questions that the two of them had, and by the end of it, she understood why she had dark-coloured hair that matched Kagami's, along with the shape of their eyes and facial features. Aloys had gone as far as to get out a mirror for her and Adrien to look at themselves, comparing what parts of them looked different.

Aloys took pictures of them while they were doing that.

She couldn't really describe how happy she'd come to be from staying with them. Marinette had started to use the bed that they'd provided for her, the soft mattress wonderful on her body, but she still kept her backpack to herself, though she hadn't really touched her belongings for a long time.

But when she brought up that she left some things in the woods—in her hiding place—Aloys said that he'd accompany her there.

She looked at him curiously at that.

"I don't want you to get hurt, kid," was his explanation.

Adrien complained that he wasn't allowed to come along, but he was more than happy to be given the task of finding something for the three of them to watch when they got back.

When she collected it all—the blankets, the packaged food that had to still be good to eat—Aloys was kind enough to show her to a cupboard that she could use to store it all in. Then, to her utter surprise, he put a lock on the outside of it before passing what the said was the only key to her, just to assure her that no one else would be able to touch her stuff.

She didn't run away when she cried.

Much as Adrien had done, Aloys passed her a bundle of tissue, far more than she needed, and hovered awkwardly in front of her, telling her not to cry—but it just made her cry harder, from a mixture of surprise that he was so alike Adrien to being grateful that she had anyone there to care about her at all.

"I—" Marinette hiccuped. "I don't remember my family."

Aloys' hand was gentle as it touched her shoulder. "It's okay."

She sniffed loudly. "I'm not a neigh—neighbour."

"I already figured that out," he said with a chuckle, but it still sounded like he needed to cough. "But if you want to stay here permanently, we can sort something else."

"Per—permanently?"

He nodded. "For good, okay? If you want it to be, this can be your home. I'll make it happen."

It just made her cry again.

-x-

Kagami had brown eyes.

Marinette's were blue.

Their noses weren't the same, nor the rest of their faces, but the shape of their eyes were, along with their hair colours. But Kagami had hers cut short to the bottom of her ears, while Marinette's was long and pulled back into a ponytail, courtesy of Aloys.

And yet, Kagami was the first she'd seen that really did look like her.

"Your eyes are brown," Marinette said as her greeting the next week.

It was the end of the lesson, the same time that Kagami had approached her previously. But when Adrien had wandered over to her, Marinette had mustered up the courage to approach Kagami after watching her for the entire lesson.

Kagami looked at her blankly. "Yours aren't."

"No," she replied, nails pressing into her palms. "They're not."

Kagami smiled at that.

She was Marinette's second friend.

Aloys couldn't count as one, could he? And Nice Lady was more than a friend, even when she was gone.

It was getting Adrien to befriend Kagami that proved to be the difficult part. After Marinette had told him after that lesson that she'd spoken to Kagami again—and that she'd _smiled—_he'd taken it upon himself to ask Kagami's parents whether she could stay with them for dinner the following week.

And because they knew Aloys, and that Marinette was there to play with Adrien, it didn't take much convincing for them to do.

When Kagami came into the house for the first time, Marinette didn't know what to do. She—she knew that she was living there, had been for weeks, but showing someone around the house wasn't something that she'd done. It wasn't hers, was it?

Adrien had seen her doubt and put his hand in hers before telling Kagami to follow them. It was the less enthusiastic version of the tour she'd been given in the beginning, and Adrien stuck close to her side the whole time, hugging her or keeping their hands together.

He threw a tantrum when Aloys tried to get him to sit beside him, rather than by her side. It ended up with Marinette sitting at the table with Kagami at her side, Aloys and Adrien on the opposite side—all the while Adrien sat there with crossed arms, pouting.

"I wanted to sit with Mari," he grumbled, having latched onto the nickname as her name was hard to pronounce.

Aloys patted his head. "She has a friend over right now."

That was what stuck out to her.

Kagami was her friend, wasn't she? Kagami hadn't approached Adrien after their lessons together, hadn't smiled at _him—_

But to her, Adrien was the cause of all the good things that had happened in her life. It was because of him that she was sat in the fancy dining room, dressed in his clothes, clean, and happily looked after.

It became her mission to make him and Kagami friends.

She'd seen the circle on the calender, had it explained to her that that was the amount of time that was left before Adrien disappeared, and she wanted to try and return all the happiness she'd been given to him.

Sharing her second friend was good, wasn't it?

But when Kagami had gone and he was sulking still, Marinette wandered upstairs, going into one of the drawers that she'd been given—that had since been filled with Adrien's clothing that he wanted her to have—to get the key that she'd stashed there.

Aloys didn't stop her when she wandered over to her cupboard, kneeling down as she concentrated to try and get the key into the lock.

Adrien stopped sulking when she gently prodded him with a snack.

It was something she'd kept away for weeks, hidden away for a bad time when her stomach would hurt from hunger, but seeing Adrien taking large bites of it—causing his cheeks to stand out—made her happier than she thought it would.

Maybe, just maybe, sharing wasn't too bad if it was with him.

However, he continued to sulk when Kagami's name popped up on their conversations. It took her a while to make the connection, to fully realise it was the mention of her that was making him upset, and it confused her greatly.

"Why?" Marinette questioned, befuddled. "She's nice."

He crossed his arms, but it didn't have the same effect as when Aloys did it (usually while staring down at them). "No."

"She is!" she insisted, louder than she would've dared to talk in the beginning. "She's like _me_. Doesn't that make her nice?"

"You're Mari, she's not," was his stubborn reply.

Aloys was the one to tell her what was really wrong when Adrien chose to dramatically slam the door to his bedroom, wanting no one to go in. But unlike Marinette's room, he didn't have a lock on his door.

"He probably thinks you're replacing him," Aloys explained. "He doesn't like any of the other kids, and now you're suddenly friends with one. He's known Kagami for years and couldn't even remember her name before you."

It was—it was so strange for her to hear that. She was used to being replaced, for being to disappear and leave her behind—but for Adrien to think that of her?

She hugged him tightly when he opened his door.

And when she asked to spend the night with him, just as Nice Lady had done when she'd been sad the first few times she'd disappeared, he didn't say no.

"Don't leave," Marinette whispered, the duvet clutched tightly in her hands.

But he was already sleeping, breathing deeply and not able to reply to her.

He shared his clothes, secrets, and with the addition of his bed as she curled up beside him that night, Marinette was more than happy to sneak him more snacks in the future. She tried to avoid Aloys' eyes—as he said she would spoil their dinner—but whenever he saw that she was going to her cupboard, his protests died.

She really liked the two of them.

It's what made it even worse as Adrien's date for leaving was only growing closer. Aloys had sat her down, explained it to her properly that he only came over for the summer, and the thought of it being a whole year before he came again made her chest feel tight.

They always left, didn't they?

Aloys coughed into his hand. "If you want, kid, you can send him letters while he's gone."

She looked up at that. "Letters?"

"Yeah," he said, wiping the hand on his trousers. "And talk on the phone, too. It'll be like he's not really gone when you can hear him rattling on."

It sounded nice.

No one had kept in contact with her before, not after they'd gone. And she really liked Adrien.

"Okay," she replied, her lower lip quivering. "I—yes."

"Okay," Aloys echoed, the corner of his eyes crinkling.

Kagami didn't stay for dinner the following week, but Marinette did talk to her—with Adrien by her side—until it was time for her to leave.

Marinette laughed when Adrien grumbled out his good-bye.

The second time they slept in the same bed, it was because Adrien asked her to. Marinette had grown to trust them enough that she no longer kept her door locked at night, and the last time they'd slept together, she hadn't been too startled in the morning. There had been something nice about the two of them curled up beside each other, whispering in the night, trying not to wake Aloys up.

She agreed without much hesitation.

And as it grew closer for the time for Adrien to leave, she continued to sleep with him at night. He complained about it with every passing day, begging over food to stay where he was, but Aloys didn't give into him.

"You're lucky you're allowed here at all," Aloys replied, pointing at him with his fork. "Don't go complaining to your father about it, or you'll only be here for a week or two next time."

Adrien decided to complain about that instead.

Marinette started to turn quiet again.

Would Aloys still want her to stay when Adrien wasn't there? The only reason she was there was because Adrien had asked about her, wasn't it? So, for him to be taken out of the picture, it was only natural for her to be on her way—right?

It really had been too good to be true.

Adrien tried to make her talk more, prattling on about anything and everything, and he kept telling her that she _had_ to reply to his letters, otherwise he'd find a way to come and kick her shins for ignoring him.

They were in bed together when she quietly asked, "You'll come back, right?"

"Yeah!" Adrien insisted. "You—you can't be best friends with Kagami, okay?"

It made her laugh.

"Okay," she said with a giggle.

He held out his little finger. "Pinky promise?"

"Only if—if you promise you'll come back," Marinette responded, hooking her little finger with his.

He grinned. "It's a deal!"

The day that Adrien had to leave, Aloys offered for her to come along with the two of them in the car. Adrien's parents weren't coming to pick him up, meaning they had to travel for a few hours instead, and Marinette was terrified of being in a vehicle for that long.

Aloys left on the condition that she'd be careful, and that she wouldn't get into any trouble without him gone, and repeated several times that he would be back by the evening.

She cried a lot after the car went into the distance, Adrien waving through the window the whole time. He'd left behind some of his clothes for her, his favourite toy, and kept saying that he'd call her when she could, so she _had_ to be there to answer.

For the first time in weeks, she walked into town after wiping her snotty nose and eyes.

Nice Lady wasn't there.

She recognised some of the other adults, but they all said that they hadn't seen her. A few commented on the nice state of her clothing—to which she was happy to know they were Adrien's, but she didn't voice that to anyone—and questioned where she was staying, but much like before, she didn't give them any definitive answers.

The little space she'd had to stash her belongings and how easy it had been to steal from Aloys had been one thing, but to share how opening and caring the old man had been to her?

It was something she didn't want to share with any of them.

It was okay to be selfish, wasn't it?

-x-

Living with Aloys alone was something else entirely.

The old man continued to pay attention to her, talk to her and ask how she was feeling and whether she was happy, and made sure they continued to eat their meals together. He didn't bathe with her—just stood outside the door, talking to her and making sure that she was safe—and she continued to leave the bedroom door left unlocked, though she did wander over to Adrien's bedroom at times, finding the sight of the few scattered toys sad.

She wasn't going to question his niceness, though. Even after Adrien had gone, Aloys was looking after her with the same care and attention that he had while Adrien was there.

It was when she asked why he had to go that school was brought up.

She clammed up at that.

Aloys say anything more.

The first time they had a guest over, Aloys asked her to stay in her bedroom, to keep out of sight and not interact with the newcomer.

Marinette didn't question it.

She saw Kagami at the weekly lessons, but she didn't stay for dinner. They talked in the breaks and while waiting for the adults that took Kagami away came, and Marinette was more than happy to whisper with her friend as people passed by them.

People didn't stare at her much any more.

But as the weeks passed, there were some evenings where Aloys went out for a few hours, telling her to keep the doors locked and not to wander outside alone. He always seemed frazzled, kneeling down to her height and asking her to repeat his words back to him so she knew what they were, and apologised that he had to leave in the first place.

She really didn't know what to think about that.

Since starting to live with him, Aloys had slowly made it so she didn't go outside alone often. He seemed to feel bad about leaving her in the house—like with when he dropped Adrien off—but there were times when it was needed.

Like for grocery shopping, apparently. As Marinette didn't want to go in the car, and he didn't want to walk down with her when Adrien wasn't there with them, she had to stay in the house, waiting for him to return.

But he explained it—said that if others saw her, they'd asked questions. And questions were bad.

She knew that.

But she could hear Aloys' coughs echoing through the house when she cracked her bedroom door open, the low murmur of whispers that were surely from the living room.

She stayed put.

Since she wasn't ready to go to school—or ready to live with him legally, as he put it—Aloys had taken it upon himself to buy some books, saying that they were surely the ones that Adrien was using at school.

Aloys helped her with them, and he helped her to make her handwriting more readable.

The first time she heard from Adrien, it was three weeks after he'd gone.

It was a phone call in the middle of the day.

"Mari!" he practically shouted as she was passed the phone.

Marinette's breath caught at that, utterly surprised. Aloys had only called her over by her name, not giving her any more information before she was passed the phone.

She'd seen them use it countless times—Adrien to talk to his family, Aloys to many people during the day—but it was her first time actually _holding_ one.

They talked for over an hour, apparently. Adrien rambled on about his school, the friends that he'd made, but he complained that he missed spending time with her, and that there wasn't anyone that he liked _that _much that he wanted to share his things with them.

Although she didn't talk much, it was still nice to hear from him. When they had to hang up abruptly, because Adrien's name was called loudly in the background, Marinette's words were cut off quickly as the phone was given to someone else.

The voice sounded feminine. "Father?"

Marinette panicked and almost dropped the phone.

She looked at Aloys across the room in panic, gesturing with her free hand towards the phone.

He got the hint and took the phone from her quickly.

She was happier after that, but she did voice the question to Aloys about why it had taken Adrien so long to contact them, and why she wasn't allowed to reach out first.

"His... there's some people that just don't like each other, right?" Aloys started, crouching down in front of her, as he always did. "His father's one of those. We... we don't get along, and that's why I only get to see Adrien in the summer."

It didn't make sense to her, but she accepted the answer.

Time continued like that.

Marinette would see Kagami once a week, would excitedly talk with her and tell her all that she could, and she'd hear from Adrien every two weeks or so, always with whispers before a male-sounding voice called his name and he had to leave.

She learned a lot with him; from words, making her handwriting better, to learning more about the world around her. There was so much that she didn't know, but Aloys was more than happy to tell her anything when she asked. There was barely any time where he'd shook his head, telling her that she had to wait until she was older, and he never told her to go away.

The most he did was tell her to hide in her room, but that was only when people came over.

Halloween was new to her.

Adrien told her excitedly about his costume, but she didn't have anything to say to that. After the call, Aloys explained it to her, but even though she'd have the option to cover her face, willingly going up to knock on doors was something she'd always been told not to do.

She stayed hidden away in her room when people kept coming to the door that evening, not wanting to be seen. There was still the rule that people couldn't know that she was living with Aloys, not from fear of being taken away, even though he assured her that he'd do his best to stop that from happening.

The following week came with a surprise.

"Do you want to join?" Aloys asked over breakfast, the question coming out of nowhere.

"What?"

He made a disapproving noise. "Don't talk with your mouth full."

Her cheeks felt warm. "What—what do you mean?"

It turned out, he meant the lessons from that day onwards. He explained that she'd been watching long enough to understand the rules, and that if she wanted, she could have Kagami partner up with her and help her out—but only if she wanted.

It had never even seemed to be an option to her.

"I can?" she questioned, wide-eyed.

He cleared his throat. "Yeah."

Just to make sure, she asked, "Really?"

"It'll be good for you," is what he said in response.

And so, she started the lessons. It was strange at first, as she wasn't used to holding anything in her hands with the intention to use it as a weapon, and the sword felt heavy in her hands. After the first lesson, her arms felt sore, and Aloys had laughed when she'd said that, but he put a hand on her hand and ruffled her hair.

It made her smile.

It was fun to spend time with Kagami, too. They could talk a lot more when Marinette was actually included in the lessons with her, and if she ever messed up, Kagami pointed out what she was doing wrong before the other children could insert themselves into their conversation.

Marinette was still wary of approaching the others. They looked at her, of course, curious as to why she was only just joining the lessons after sitting on the sidelines for weeks, but no one really bothered her, not when Kagami was by her side.

Adrien was jealous when she told him that she'd taken his place for lessons.

And with the lessons included in her routine with Aloys, she started to adapt to the life without Adrien. Of course, she spoke to him on the phone sometimes, but it took until the end of November, according to Aloys, for her handwriting to be good enough to send him a letter.

She almost ran down the road away from Aloys when they went to send it.

Aloys had told her it was Adrien's birthday then, so she'd included a birthday card in the envelope. It brought up the question of when hers was, but Marinette didn't have an answer for that.

She wasn't really sure at all. But instead of pushing it, Aloys let the topic drop.

Adrien's response came almost a week later.

So, exchanging letters was added into the routine, too.

The life that she'd started to have was so drastically different to the one she'd had before. And as the weather grew colder, she didn't have to wonder about being covered in the night, worried that the rain would get her and make her clothing damp for too long. The people that she lived beside wouldn't be leaving to find somewhere else to stay—leaving, always _leaving—_and the only times that Aloys left, he always told her beforehand, giving her an answer to when he was coming back.

The first night where he didn't come back at the time she'd said, she'd sat in the living room, staring up at the clock.

He came in walking funny, a pained noise escaping him as he came inside, much like the sounds he made when he stood up too quickly.

He sucked in a breath when he saw her sitting there, her knees pulled against her chest.

"You didn't have to stay up," Aloys said quietly, coming to sit beside her, a loud sigh leaving him as he relaxed against the cushion.

She rested her chin on her knees. "Late."

"Pardon?"

"You're late," Marinette said, pointing towards the clock.

"Oh." Aloys let out a loud breath. "I am. I'm sorry."

But as she tried to swallow the lump in her throat, all she could say was, "You're—you're _late_."

There was silence for a moment, Marinette only aware of the sound of her breathing, before Aloys gently put his hand on her back. "It won't happen again," he said, voice as soft as his touch. "I'm sorry I scared you."

She hiccuped. "Am not scared."

"Sure, you're not."

It took a few days for him to walk properly again.

Another letter she received from Adrien brought up some questions.

"Christmas?" Marinette asked, furrowing her eyebrows.

Aloys cleared his throat. "Yeah, kid. It's me and you this year."

She blinked.

"...Do you know what it is?" he quietly asked when she didn't make any move to respond.

"I—yeah," she stuttered out, putting her hands into her pockets. The clothes Adrien had given her were starting to fit her properly, meaning she'd filled out some and grown. "I... I had it with Nice—Nice Lady last year."

But she doubted that Nice Lady was back.

And it was because of that conversation that Aloys went into town with her, just the two of them walking along the road as she was still scared of being in cars, and they looked around to see whether Nice Lady was there or not. She wasn't sure about Aloys' expression when she'd told him about her, but he was the one to suggest that they look for her together.

She wasn't there.

Marinette tried to fight down the tears, but they bubbled up to the surface.

Aloys, as always, passed her more tissues than necessary.

"We don't have to celebrate, if you want," he murmured softly. "Hell, if I was alone, I wouldn't do anything."

She sniffed.

It was halfway home that he suggested, "What if we get a little tree?"

"They're all big," Marinette muttered.

"Well, we'll try and get one smaller than you," he responded. "It might be a challenge. You are quite the gremlin."

She wrinkled her nose at that. "Am not."

"Oh, are you not?" Aloys said, raising his eyebrows as he looked down at her.

"_No_!"

When they went into town for groceries, the two of them walking along the road, Marinette was allowed to pick out a present to send Adrien. It took her a while to pick what she thought he'd like, especially since she was lost from so much choice, and from the small smile that Aloys gave her, she had to assume that she'd chosen correctly.

They sent it along with her letter and a card for his family.

After she'd seen Aloys wrapping up Adrien's gift, she asked for some paper herself, and he just raised his eyebrows before giving it to her.

She wrapped his gift without him looking.

At when it came time for Christmas, he really did find a tree that was smaller than her. It was tiny, not decorated at all, but it was her _first_. She stared at it for longer than necessary, amused by how out of place it looked in the living room, and it was only when Aloys put a gift underneath it—one that she didn't even know he had—she did the same with her one for him.

He got her new clothes, ones that were actually meant for her.

"Since you're growing," he said with a shrug when she looked up from the gift, wide-eyed. "You need something that fits you."

She hugged the clothes to her chest.

And when he opened his gift, to see the items that she'd taken out of her cupboard and terribly wrapped, he just laughed and thanked her.

Her smile was really wide.

-x-

Aloys started to teach her more things.

It was how to take care of herself, that was what he said. From getting a stool to show her how to do the washing up, how to clean things in the home, to going to the garden building to learn how to defend herself with more than a sword.

"You won't always have a weapon," Aloys announced as his explanation.

She didn't protest to any of it.

Everything he did was for a reason, that was what he said. Whether it was him teaching her to fold laundry—which she just wanted to hug the warm clothing to her chest instead—to learning not to talk to strangers, no matter what they were offering.

It was like an echo of things that she'd been told before, but more fleshed out. Aloys explained anything she asked, was patient with her, and with how often he told her the exact amount of time that he'd be going out for, she trusted him.

She really, really did.

She got better at holding the wooden sword during lessons.

"Do you use a real one?" she questioned when they were inside the home, after Kagami had gone back. "A sword—I mean a sword."

His smile was lopsided. "You bet I do."

She tilted her head. "Why?"

"Sometimes, it's necessary," was his reply.

She rocked on her heels, reminiscent to how Adrien always did when he was excited. "Will I learn?"

"You bet, kid." Aloys grinned, wrinkles more pronounced. "You'll be able to beat the hell out of anyone when we're done."

She made a scandalised noise. "That's a bad word!"

"And I earned the right to do it," he replied, crossing his arms. "When you've finished your self-defence, you can swear your little head off."

Marinette squinted. "Really?"

He threw his head back and laughed. "We'll see, you little devil."

Aloys was the most responsible, put-together, and kind adult that she'd ever met, but he had things that he was bad at. For one, when he trimmed his beard, it always came out as lopsided as his smile at times, which she snickered to herself about. He wasn't good at multi-tasking either; if he was cooking while talking to her, he tended to get caught up in the conversation, meaning the food would burn.

But despite all of that, she quickly grew to realise just how great he was.

What other adults would've opened their homes to her without turning her way after a few days? None of them would've allowed her to stay after Adrien had left, would they? And he'd continued to make sure she felt safe, even got her new _clothes—_

She felt _wanted_.

And wasn't that something strange?

Her voice was soft when she asked him, "Why am I here?"

Aloys just hummed. "Do you have anywhere else to be?"

And that was all there was to it, to him.

Aloys had told her to stay upstairs while he had someone over, but she needed the toilet. Marinette crept across the hallway, avoiding the stairs so she wouldn't be seen, and her heart was beating terribly when she opened the bathroom door, checking whether it was clear or not.

She could hear their whispers echo more out there than she could in her bedroom.

"I'm _not_ telling you—"

Her door didn't creak as she opened it.

"—Aloys, stop being a stubborn prick!"

She closed it before she could hear anything more.

She didn't know what he did.

Adults had jobs, didn't they? That was how they were supposed to get money to buy what they wanted—she'd learned that much, but she didn't know what Aloys did. He disappeared sometimes, but it was only for a few hours, and while he did come back grumbling and injured a few times, she really didn't know what he did.

Was it his friends that he had over that he didn't want her to meet?

And when she brought that up, he gently placed a hand on top of her head. "No, sweetheart," he said, the petname one that he'd slowly started to use. "They're not my friends. They're—just not the type of people I want you to meet, okay?"

She frowned. "I don't get it."

"They're not as... open-minded as me," Aloys explained. "They'd turn you in in a heartbeat."

That was all that needed to be said.

But with her questioning who they were, Aloys started to be more open with her about it.

When he was teaching her self-defence one day, he dropped to his knees in front of her, gently putting his hands onto her shoulders, causing her to look up at him curiously.

Aloys met her gaze. "If anyone—I mean _anyone—_comes inside when I'm not here, I want you to hide, okay?"

She couldn't hide her curiosity. "Why?"

After a moment of hesitation, where he opened his mouth before closing it, clearly thinking over his answer, Aloys said, "They'll be after something."

"But what?" Marinette asked.

"Something special," was the response she got. "It's my job to protect it, and they won't hesitate to hurt you to get to it."

She furrowed her brow. "But I don't know what it is."

"No, you don't," he agreed, reaching up to run his hand over his head, even though his hair was all pulled back into the low ponytail that she still asked him to do for her as well. "But they don't know that, okay? If anyone sees you, they'll... they'll do bad things."

It was the first that she'd really heard of it.

Then, to her surprise, he added on, "You can't tell Adrien this."

Her eyes grew wide. "But—"

"Promise me," Aloys said gruffly. "You can't let him know any of this—it'll keep him safe, okay?"

But in her mind, she was only safe _because_ of Adrien. He was the reason for why she was with Aloys at all, wasn't he?

It didn't take much to convince her to agree with him.

She didn't tell Adrien when they had their call, didn't include it in her letters, but rather than feel guilty that she wasn't telling him everything she—she was protecting him, wasn't she?

It was the least she could do after everything.

Kagami stayed for dinner the following week. Marinette hadn't expected it, but she wasn't complaining. The two of them didn't go into Adrien's room, not while he wasn't there, and instead played in the living room before dinner was ready.

She didn't tell Kagami either, even though she hadn't been told not to.

She wanted Aloys to trust her as much as she trusted him.

But when he had someone come over again—that time in the middle of the day—Marinette slowly pushed her door open, trying to listen in.

She knew that she shouldn't, but she just—she wanted to _know_. They were bad people, weren't they?

Anyone that hurt another purposely was bad, that was what Aloys taught in their lessons. It was only reasonable to defend herself, and that was exactly what she was learning to do.

It wasn't Aloys' voice that she heard. "You're being ridiculous!"

"You can fuck off if you think I'm going to trust you," Aloys replied lowly. "_You_? You brag about your latest kill when you're in the fucking pub."

She crept closer to the stairs, wrapping her hands on the bannister to keep her balance.

"Mate, you're so fucking _dumb—_"

The loud noises that followed weren't from voices. Marinette put a hand over her mouth to stay quiet, but she—she was _sure_ that what was happening downstairs isn't what normally occurred. But she had to stay hidden, couldn't go downstairs to see what was happening, but she could hear the sounds of what seemed to be a scuffle.

The pained grunts that came from Aloys, along with the other person that was there, made her eyes prickle with tears.

She had to just sit there for minutes on end, her heart thumping in her chest.

But she was small—so _small—_and there was no way she'd be able to stop a grown adult from hurting Aloys, was there?

She was weak.

The last words that were said downstairs weren't from Aloys. "Make the right choice."

The slam from the front door could be heard upstairs.

How long did it take her normally to go downstairs? She didn't want to be too quick, too fast, to reveal that she'd been listening in—

Her footsteps were audible before she could really stop herself, running downstairs and through the hallways, trying to find Aloys.

And when she did, he was slumped against the countertop in the kitchen, barely in the stool. He had his head in his hands, and as she took steps closer, she could see the red liquid that was dribbling down his wrists, splattering onto the countertop and standing out horribly against it.

Her sobs came back up to the surface.

Aloys turned his head to look at her slowly, revealing the reddened parts of his face, cracked skin, and cuts that hadn't been there previously, and he grimaced instead of smiling at her appearance. "I told you not to listen in, kid."

She stared, wide-eyed.

"I could see your shadow."

Her lower lip wobbled.

-x-

Nightmares didn't happen often.

But sometimes, when she woke up in the middle of the night with sweat covering her body, all she did was curl into a ball and wrap the duvet around herself.

She wasn't going to go to Aloys, not when he was surely already asleep.

But he noticed her mood was off in the morning, no matter how much she tried to hide it.

"Nightmare," she admitted, not looking him in the eyes.

He didn't ask what it was about.

She didn't want to admit it was about the fight he'd gotten in getting out of control, being like some of those flashes of violence she'd seen on television.

And when he just pulled her into a one-armed hug, Marinette worked up the courage to ask, "How—how do you keep them away?"

"By having something powerful under my bed," he answered with a wink. "Why don't we do the same with you?"

The answer to that was for him to put one of the wooden swords that they used in lessons underneath her bed.

It made her laugh.

Aloys told her where his secret was.

Well, _not_ what the secret was, but he did say to never let anyone into his room. He gave her a second key to his bedroom—it had a lock, just like Marinette's did—and he instructed her to make sure that it was locked when someone came in.

It was a responsibility that she didn't have before.

He healed from his injuries quickly, not stopping their lessons at all. A few children questioned the dark bruises across his face during their weekly lesson, but he waved away their concerns.

With her, however, he admitted they hurt.

And in return, she confessed that she wasn't happy the days following his fight.

She didn't tell Adrien.

The secrets started to grow, but—but Aloys was _trusting_ her. He was telling her things that Adrien wasn't allowed to know, he was giving her knowledge that she wasn't supposed to have, and he was teaching her to defend herself and the things that she knew.

And all that in exchange for affection, a place to live, and someone to brush her hair in the mornings?

She didn't complain.

She did cry when her hands started to be painful, or when she tripped over and skinned her knee, but the difference to before was that Aloys was there to pass her the medical kit, reminding her every time that it was there for whenever she needed it.

She wondered whether she'd have to use it on him.

There was another fight.

Marinette hadn't crept to the stairs to listen in, too terrified that she'd been the reason for his injuries the first time, but when the noise quieted down after the front door closed, she crept downstairs.

She probably shouldn't have.

Blood was soaked into the carpet, the red standing out against the carpet, and she could see the droplets that led out to the front door.

Aloys had blood smeared on his cheek.

"You shouldn't have come down," he said when he saw her, lips curling down into a frown.

She could hear her heartbeat in her head. "I-I was scared."

When he coughed wetly into his hand, she could see the damaged skin of his knuckles. "Why?"

"That—that you were hurt," Marinette admitted.

"It's not my blood," he answered. "Not this time, I promise."

She swallowed the lump in her throat.

That was the night he taught her how to get bloodstains out of the carpet.

She didn't question whether it was a normal thing to be taught; alongside the self-defence, it seemed to blend in with teaching her to how to take care of herself within the home. So, it was normal, wasn't it? There always seemed to be arguments involved when visitors came, and if it was going to continue happen she—she _wanted_ to be helpful.

And if that involved kneeling down alongside Aloys in the living room as they scrubbed the carpet, she was fine with that.

The way he patted her head afterwards was worth it.

She beamed.

"Is it locked up?" Marinette questioned as he taught her to cook. "Your secret?"

His laughter sounded throaty. "You bet. Even if I let you loose in there, you'd never find it."

She huffed. "Wanna bet?"

"No, I don't _want_ to," he responded, flicking her forehead. "You're a little demon, did you know that?"

"I can stab you."

Aloys chuckled. "We'll see about that."

With a pout, Marinette crossed her arms. "I can!"

"With your little wooden sword?" He grinned, showing his crooked teeth. "The most you'll do is give me a splinter, sweetheart. You have a while to go before you can do any damage."

Frowning, she asked, "How long?"

Aloys held up a hand above her head. "Until you grow bigger."

But she _had_. More of Adrien's clothes were turning too small for her, meaning she chose to keep wearing the outfit that she'd gotten as a gift, but it was starting to get dirty too quickly.

It was because of that that Aloys got her more clothes in exchange for her helping out with the chores around the house. She was already doing those things with him, sticking by his side for most of the day, so she didn't have anything to complain about.

She even got to pick them out from a catalogue, but he had to go in the car to get to the store.

She still didn't want to do that.

While Adrien had always talked about his class-mates, their next call had him even more excited than usual. It turned out that he'd finally been allowed a pet, and he was gushing about all the options that he was given.

The following week, his letter to her included two pictures of the kitten.

All she had to say to Aloys about that was, "I'm happy it's not a dog."

Aloys laughed a lot at that.

He attempted to ask whether she wanted to go to school, to be like the other children, but Marinette had clammed up at the thought of it. She wouldn't—they'd take her away from Aloys, wouldn't they?

He didn't even try to deny it.

"N-no," she stuttered out, wrapping her arms around herself. "I don't want to."

Maybe, just maybe, it wasn't the right thing to do. She didn't see any other children hiding out and refusing to go to school. In the films she saw on the television, they always gave in in the end, found a family and lived happily-ever-after—

But that wasn't it for her, was it?

She'd only just found happiness, and she wanted to selfishly hold onto it.

As long as Aloys wasn't going to force her to do anything, she was fine with what she had. Even with the skin of her hands turning red and painful from practising too much, or the bruises that she had appearing on her body from when she tried to replicate a self-defence move that he'd taught her, she liked it.

She didn't want to change it.

But she didn't control change, did she? It wasn't a power of hers, and it never would be.

Marinette followed the instructions she was given whenever someone visited. She'd creep across the hallway, making sure Aloys' bedroom door was locked, no matter how curious she was as to what was inside.

He _trusted_ her.

That was confirmed when he sat her down, taking out a small book from a drawer than he'd unlocked.

"This," Aloys started, putting the book down on the table in front of her. "This is what you'll need to look for if anything ever happens to me, okay?"

She furrowed her brow. "But... ambulance?"

"No." He shook his head. "No ambulance."

That wasn't something he'd ever said to her before.

"These are the okay ones," Aloys said, opening the first page and pointing to what she identified to be his writing. "I wouldn't go as far as saying good, but I'll add in some sort of code for you, so you know which are bad."

It just confused her. "Why?"

"To be safe," he said. "If anything—if I'm not around or don't return for a few days, I want you to call one of these people."

She frowned. "But no one knows me."

"You'll tell them that I sent you, okay?" Aloys replied, pushing the book closer to her. "You know more about me than any of these bastards ever will, but that doesn't mean you tell them _everything_."

"You said a bad word."

He shook his head. "That doesn't matter right now, sweetheart. You have to promise not to tell them our secrets."

She mouthed the word our to herself.

"They'll help you, if you need it," he assured her. "They owe me favours, and I reckon this'll just about cover it."

But all Marinette could do was ask, "Where are you going?"

"Nowhere soon, hopefully," he answered. "But we have to plan things, kid. The unexpected can happen."

Another key joined her collection.

-x-

He kept coughing.

Marinette caught a cold, slept with tissues beside her pillows so she wouldn't have to get out of bed, and by the time she'd recovered from that—with Aloys hovering and making sure she was okay, something she hadn't had before—he was still ill.

"You cough a lot."

He just smiled, making the wrinkles on his face more pronounced. "It's my age, I guess."

"How old?" she questioned.

Aloys raised his eyebrows at her. "How old are _you_?"

She shrugged.

"Well, when you've decided, I'll get back to you with my age," he proposed, probably not expecting her to take him up on that.

Marinette perked up at that. "I want to be the same as Adrien!"

"You're so much smaller than him, though," he mused. "Even with your little growth spurt."

She crossed her arms. "I'm not _little_."

"Sweetheart, you have to use a stool for a reason—"

"_No_!"

He assured her that it was just because he smoked a lot, but she'd never _seen _him do it. Aloys said that he'd given it up for when Adrien was with him, and hadn't picked it up since.

Adrien's letters and calls kept being about his kitten, expressing how many he was for being allowed to get one. She always enjoyed the stories that he told her through the phone, along with the drawings he included with his letters, but she didn't have much to say in return to him, not when she had to keep certain things secret.

He kept huffing and demanding that Kagami not take his place as her best friend.

And as much as she enjoyed time with Kagami—the few hours during their weekly lessons and the occasional dinner—she still much preferred talking to Adrien on the phone.

Since Adrien kept including photographs with his letters, she asked to do the same. Aloys gave her a disposable camera, telling her that she could take pictures of anything she wanted and that he'd print them out.

Her following letter included pictures of Aloys, some of Kagami, and one of Marinette and Aloys together.

Adrien sent her back one of him smiling at the camera.

Aloys bought her a frame to keep it in her bedroom.

It made her happier than she could express.

There was so much that she didn't have before. Marinette slowly grew used to the change in her life, but she always wondered whether it would be gone when she woke up—that the soft duvet would be replaced with the tattered blankets, that she'd be back in her dirty clothing, rather than the ones that she'd been allowed to pick out for herself from a catalogue.

Over breakfast, she asked, "Are you my adult?"

Aloys choked on his drink.

When he'd recovered, wiping his mouth on his sleeve, though his face was still red (from what she could see, other than the beard), he enquired, "Your... adult?"

"Yes." She nodded. "Adrien—Adrien has his adults that he lives with. Does that mean you're mine?"

"I'm not your father," he replied, clearing his throat. "Do you mean guardian?"

She shrugged. "I've never had an adult."

"You had—what was her name? Nice Lady, right?" Aloys pointed out.

"But she wasn't _my_ adult," she insisted.

Aloys frowned. "Why not?"

"She left," Marinette simply said. "Adults don't do that."

"You mean, well, like a caretaker, don't you?" he mused. "Someone older to take care of you—like _family_, but not related, yes?"

Marinette made a thinking noise. "Maybe."

"That's a guardian, kid."

She squinted. "Are you mine?"

"In everyone else's eyes, I'm not," Aloys stated. "But... I kind of am, aren't I?"

With a frown, she replied, "I don't get it."

"To really be your guardian, people need to know you're here," he explained, reaching up to smooth out the hairs going into his ponytail. "But that's not what you want, is it?"

She quickly shook her head.

"So, you still don't want to go to school?"

Marinette stubbornly said, "I'm not leaving."

It was nice. They had a system, a way to live comfortably together, and before she knew it, she'd been living with him—without Adrien—for _months_.

Adrien was just as excited as her for the upcoming summer. He was being allowed to stay with Aloys again, the same amount as before, and it meant that within a short amount of time, he was going to be standing before her.

Would she be taller than him?

Aloys had said that she'd grown a lot—had filled out into the clothing and become stronger—but she couldn't really tell the difference when she wasn't lifting heavy things. The small wooden sword that everyone used for lessons was becoming easier to hold, but it wasn't as though she was _brilliant_ at that.

Aloys assured her that it would come with age.

But she was just so excited for Adrien to come. Aloys warned her that she'd have to hide away for a few hours, while Adrien was dropped out since she couldn't be seen, and the plan was for her to just lock her bedroom door and wait for someone to knock on it to tell her that it was safe to come out.

Aloys had even said that Adrien could bring his kitten, as there wouldn't be anyone to care for it back home.

"It's still a while away, kid," Aloys told her when she kept asking how long.

He made a point of flipping to the next page of the calender for a bit, pointing out the circled date so she'd know how long it would be.

She started crossing off the days as they passed.

It was the most excited she'd ever been.

But as the days counted down, something else happened.

When she woke up one morning, she was surprised that she was the first up. Aloys usually waited for her in the kitchen, to let her help him make breakfast so she'd know what to do, and it was early enough that the sun wasn't shining through all the windows, meaning she had to turn the lights in the hallway on as she wandered through the house.

He wasn't downstairs.

"Aloys?" she called out loudly.

Her voice echoed in the hallway.

But he wasn't in the rooms downstairs.

Her footsteps were audible as she walked through the house, poking her head into the rooms. But as she continued to come up empty, she found herself standing outside of his bedroom.

The door didn't creak as she opened it.

With a frown, she entered the room and said, "Aloys?"

There was a lump in the bed—large enough to be him. She wandered closer, jumping up onto the mattress and reaching across the shake his shoulder, something that would've normally grabbed his attention, but rather than groaning and telling her to get off, he continued to stay still, not responding.

She shook him harder.

There wasn't any response.

She used all her force to push him, trying to do anything to get a reaction, but there was no response from him. His body was still, having been on his side and been pushed so his face was pressed against the pillow—

It wasn't natural.

She scrambled out of the bed, stumbling around to the other side, calling out his name as she went. And yet, when she pushed his shoulder so his face wasn't on the pillow any more, his eyes were still closed.

Her throat felt tight.

She looked at his chest, trying to see whether there was a steady rise or fall, but she couldn't really see anything through her blurred eyes. And as she sniffed loudly, she reached out, clumsily putting her hand on his throat, where he'd taught her to check for a pulse—

They always left, didn't they?

Her adult wasn't supposed to _leave_.

-x-

Aloys didn't have a wooden sword underneath his bed to keep the nightmares away.

It took Marinette a long time to realise that she had to move, to do what Aloys had taught her if something ever happened to him. Her eyes were red-rimmed, there was a lump at the back of her throat, and she just felt so _tired_, but she followed his instructions.

It was only when she'd packed her bag—a new one, not the one she'd originally came with—and got the book Aloys had locked away in the kitchen that she remembered about his secret.

How—how was she even supposed to protect it? Aloys wouldn't be _there_—

She couldn't think about that.

When she went into his bedroom, she refused to look at his body on the mattress. She stubbornly got on her knees, using her pitiful strength to pull out the drawers beneath the bed, but there wasn't anything special inside; just socks that she checked the insides of being tossing aside, frustration causing her tears to appear once more.

There wasn't anything inside.

At least, not until she'd pulled the actual drawer out, dropping it on her fingers in the process so she shrieked in pain. Once she'd gotten over that, holding her throbbing hand to her chest, she saw that there were only floorboards underneath the bed.

It was the same as the rest of the room, but the shape of the wood wasn't quite the same.

It was probably her smartest moment.

When she lifted up the small section of the wood—that was really stuck together as a sort of cover, not the separate planks as the rest of the floor—Marinette found a large duffel bag inside.

It was too large for her to carry, though. She already had her backpack that she'd stuffed full of everything that she could, not quite thinking about how much it would hurt her back, but she knew that carrying another bag along wouldn't be possible, not if she wanted to go far.

Aloys had never told her anything about it; just that he was protecting something, it being the reason that those visitors had argued with him and _wanted_ it before.

She'd always wondered, wanted to think that it would be something grand, but when she slipped her hand inside, she pulled out an item that wasn't too big, only just longer than the length of her hand.

It was a knife—a dagger—that had a cover over it, looking innocent in her hands.

She was very confused.

But when she reached into the bag again, she just found an identical one. Two covered knives that were matching, clearly a part of a pair, but why would such little things by in a large bag?

There was only one other item in the bag, and it was equally small—but larger, round, and she couldn't wrap her hand completely around it, not with her little hands.

It was a bandalore.

With the knives and bandalore out, there wasn't anything else left inside, not at all. She checked for pockets, crawled under the mattress to see whether there was anything inside the flooring still, but that was it.

Aloys—he protected _this_?

As much as she didn't want to believe it, it was all that she could find in his room. She checked the other areas, even crawling into his wardrobe, but she couldn't find anything else that was out of place.

It was all she had to go on.

She stuffed them into her bag, shoving them to the bottom and covering them with her belongings, thinking that it would be best for them to be down there. No one would look at her and suspect her to have such things, would they?

It was okay, she'd—she'd be _fine_.

She'd managed to be alone with Aloys' help before, she was different now, wasn't she? He'd taught her the basics of self-defence, for if the worst happened, and she was taller, able to lift more than she could before.

The worries could wait.

With her nose and eyes surely red, she went out the back door for what could be the last time, recounting the instructions in her head. In the front pocket of her bag, she had the small notebook with the different numbers and addresses in them, complete with the names of many adults that Aloys associated with, each marked with how trustworthy they were for her.

She'd be fine, right?

But as she walked, sticking to the edge of the road as she went into town, her hands curling tightly into the straps of her backpack, she felt numb.

She'd never really felt that way before.

She'd lost those that she'd lived beside before, them disappearing out of the blue, but none had taken her in as Aloys had done. And if he was gone—

She wouldn't see Adrien.

A sob escaped her at that.

She couldn't stay in that big house alone, not at all. Aloys had made it clear that she'd have to leave if anything ever happened to him, that someone would come to check it out and find out that he wasn't there, and it had happened when Adrien was supposed to come so soon.

But he wouldn't be coming if Aloys couldn't pick up the phone.

Aloys had always kept her hidden for a reason. To the outside world, he was just an old man that had lived alone, occasionally taking care of his neighbour's child—that was lie that he'd taught her to say to Kagami, after all.

She couldn't see Kagami either. Marinette didn't even know where she lived.

Kagami had never been a part of the plan.

It was only made worse when she found out that Nice Lady wasn't in town.

She was alone, then.

It brought more tears to her eyes.

-x-

It felt like it took a long time to get to the first address. Marinette had packed a map to bring along with her, had stopped at a library to ask for help and ask for directions to her destination, pretending that she was planning it out for the trip with her family.

It caused a lump to appear in her throat.

After spending so many months—almost a year—inside and being pampered, it was startling how different it was being back on the streets again. Marinette stayed by herself, not trusting anyone that came near her, not when she cradled her backpack against her chest, not wanting anyone to touch anything that was inside.

Aloys had never told her to take it with her, but it was the last thing she had of him, wasn't it? And for someone to steal that away from her, it would've meant that she'd failed terribly.

She didn't want to do that.

The weather was hot again, horribly so. It should've meant that she would've been in the garden with Adrien, not wearing a jacket because it didn't fit inside her bag and kept falling off when she wrapped it around her waist, and definitely not that she was alone, trying to follow a map to someone that wasn't Aloys' friend.

And when she thought she couldn't really cry any more, the tears kept coming.

But she continued on, even when her feet hurt, when her back was aching from adjusted to sleeping without a bed again, but she couldn't really hide her flinch whenever a stranger wandered up to her and asked where her adult was.

She looked them in the eyes when she replied that she was going to meet them.

It wasn't really a lie, was it? She wasn't walking aimlessly without a goal in her life, she—she'd been given a plan, something to follow.

She just didn't know what it meant for her in the future.

Although she knew she shouldn't, Marinette sometimes pulled out one of the daggers from the bottom of the bag, but never did she take the case off of it. Aloys had taught her with wooden swords only, but she assumed that using a dagger couldn't be too difficult, could it?

She didn't want to find out.

The money she'd taken with her was starting to run out. She'd been buying food along the way, trying to make it last instead of stealing it like before, but it was dwindling slowly.

By the time she reached her destination, she had blisters on her feet (she wondered whether they'd match the ones on her hands in time), peeling skin on her shoulders from the sun, and her back hurt from the amount that she had to carry.

It wasn't an old man that answered the door.

It was a woman, one with not as many wrinkles as Aloys had had, but there was grey in her hair. She stared down at Marinette at the door, waiting for either of them to speak, and Marinette could feel her palms growing sweaty as she looked at the woman.

Why would she look after her?

As it turned out, after confirming that the woman was who she was looking for, saying that Aloys had sent her gave her entrance into the house. Marinette was sure that she looked a mess—mud was covering her previously white socks—but she couldn't find it in herself to feel guilty as she let mud on the carpet.

The lady didn't tell her to take her shoes off.

"Is Aloys coming?"

Marinette didn't explain herself; didn't tell the woman what had happened, that she was by herself, or that she didn't know what she was doing—all she did was point out that she owed Aloys a favour.

It earned her a bath, food, and some money to along her way.

Marinette didn't ask for any more.

It was clear that the woman was suspicious. While she was eating, she could hear the woman on the phone, whispering to her friends, Aloys' name popping up throughout the conversation.

Marinette didn't savour the food.

"This is it, all right?" the woman said as she opened the front door, allowing Marinette to walk out. "I don't owe him anything any more, and I expect you _not_ to turn up again."

All that time of walking, wandering under the trees to try and avoid the sun, talking to strangers and risking being caught—all of it had been for nothing in the end, hadn't it?

Aloys had never told her that this would happen.

But what had she expected, really? For a stranger to take her in? She wasn't given any instructions, wasn't told what to do other than to _leave_, and it left her feeling number than before as she fished out the little book that Aloys had left her full of addresses, finding the second name listed that was classified as friendly.

What if one of them really wasn't as trustworthy as she was told?

Even if it was some food and money that she was given, it really didn't seem worth the long trek to get there. Marinette had managed to survive before, hadn't she? It may not have been relying on Aloys or his friends, but she'd had Nice Lady and the other adults looking out for her for a bit, something that she didn't have any more.

Did she really want to just travel from house to house?

It was a question that kept nagging at her.

What made it worse was that when she was alone, trying to find a place to sleep at night that wasn't too out in the open so she'd get caught, she wondered what Adrien was doing at that time.

It felt like forever since she'd spoken to him. She hadn't taken her collection of letters from him, only a picture of him and the one she'd taken with Aloys (that Aloys had kept a copy of), but whenever she pulled them out, it just made her cry any more.

She wondered whether he made it down to Aloys' home before realising that something was wrong.

But Adrien wasn't like her. He had adults to look after him all the time, to care and look out for him, and he had a school to go to since people _knew_ about him—

She didn't want that.

Aloys had tried to tell her otherwise to the horror stories that she'd been told before, but she wasn't going to believe it. Rather than being shoved with other children, the ones that were just waiting for a family to pick them (a terribly thing, some had told her), she wanted to do what she'd been doing all along.

It had worked for so long, so there was no reason in her eyes why it wouldn't any more.

Sometimes, when she didn't want to wallow in sadness and wanted to _do_ something, Marinette picked up a stick that was close enough to the size of the wooden swords she'd used before, trying to remember the moves that she'd been taught.

She didn't have someone to practice self-defence on, but she did try to remember that, too. It would come in handy, Aloys had said, and she wasn't going to doubt him on that.

She was just over halfway to the next destination when she ran out of money, no food in her backpack.

The route she'd taken her made it so she'd arrived at a village, one where it wasn't bustling with traffic or a crowd of people that towered over her. Still, she stayed on the outskirts at times, trying to keep out of sight—the old familiar tactics she'd been told coming to mind.

She stole someone's wallet.

To her glee, they didn't even look back, hadn't felt the jostle of their bag when she reached in, trying not to made a triumphant sound and stopped herself from running off to look at her spoilers. Marinette just walked off slowly, as though nothing had happened, but the pocket of her shorts was bulkier than before.

She'd bought a small tent that was around her size, right back when she'd first started her journey. It seemed like a better choice, especially since Adrien had had a similar one that they'd had to assemble whenever they'd wanted to use it.

_Adrien_—

No, she didn't want to think about him.

The weather was growing colder, the layers on her clothing adding up, and she shivered terribly in the evenings. It was only when she realised that she really wasn't going to be able to be by herself in the cold, not when she didn't even know how to make a _fire_, that she wandered around to try and see whether there was anyone else like her outside.

It resulted in a lady asking her where her parents were.

She ran away as fast as she could.

She didn't make it to the second house.

-x-

"What about you, Mari?" was called out to her, pulling her away from her thoughts. "Have you punched anyone yet?"

There was a chorus of laughter from that, but she just hugged her backpack tighter to her chest, shooting the speaker an unimpressed look.

It just caused more from the others. "I'm sure that glare will work wonders when someone's trying to steal your shit."

"Fuck off, like you could even stop _anyone_ from knicking yours—"

"Are you trying to pick a fucking fight with me, Kim?" It was emphasised with the sound of knuckles cracking. "I can show you what a loser you are, if you want."

Marinette tuned it out.

She didn't talk much with the make-shift group that she'd found. They varied in ages, some close to hers, while others had deep voices and towered high above her—but despite that, they all had something in common.

Although she didn't trust them completely, it wasn't the worst arrangement to have. She didn't have to share her food, give them any more attention than she wanted to, and she mostly kept to herself. Marinette wandered off when she wanted to, came back in the evenings to sleep, but she made sure to keep her backpack with her at all times.

No one had tried to get inside it yet, and she'd been with them for a few months.

Somehow, because she was the youngest, they were under the impression that she was horribly weak and had ran away from home. Marinette didn't correct them on that—she had run away from a home, hadn't she?

They didn't need to know that she knew where to punch them to give her enough time to run away.

It worked well in her favour, actually. A few of them had taken pity on her and given her some of their food, a blanket, and always beckoned her over when the fire was roaring, just so she'd be warm enough.

None of her smiles were as bright as before, though.

Sometimes, when she stared into the flickering flames, she wondered where Nice Lady was; wanting to know whether she was safe, if it was as warm for her as it was for Marinette.

She didn't have to worry about Adrien.

She wondered whether anyone worried about her.

For the most part, Marinette kept to herself. Although she didn't let her belongings out of her sight, not the ones that she needed to take at a moments notice for if she had to abruptly leave, she did start to have a collection of books that she'd found.

The book were kept in a pile to the side of where she preferred to sleep. She added to it slowly, all different genres that she'd found along the way, and despite knowing that she couldn't take them along with her, she still felt protective other than, meaning she hesitated when someone asked to borrow them.

But the others started to add more to the pile, coming home from wandering the streets—or whatever they did, Marinette didn't know since she never went out with everyone—with a few tattered or stained books that they'd found outside, happily showing her their spoils.

It was a tight-knit group, it seemed.

They had a lot of horror stories; from abusive homes to actually being dumped on the side of the road (as they insisted, though she wasn't sure whether to believe them or not), there was more than enough reason for her to believe them when they said that getting caught wouldn't do them any favours.

At least it was consistent. There wasn't anyone telling her that she could ask for her, to find a family and go to school, but telling her to keep her head down and out of trouble if she wanted things to stay the same.

That was the plan, at least.

It was her job to protect the items Aloys had had, wasn't it?

No one would expect a child to have them, but she knew that others would want to get their hands on them. The daggers and bandalore stayed at the bottom of her bag, safely tucked away and kept away from everyone else.

Of all the people that she was staying with in an abandoned building where they'd started to make their own—from the fabric that had been stuck up on the walls and specific areas for everyone to sleep—the person that paid her the most attention was male, and a lot older than her.

His eyes were almost the same as hers, but she knew why that was. It didn't confuse her like it had with Kagami—

Marinette didn't want to think about her either.

Kim was tall, had his hair shaved unevenly, and talked louder than everyone else. He had the habit of getting in fights with others, so she came home in bruises and with bloodstains on his clothes, and the first time that it had happened, Marinette couldn't help but stare at him.

And then, he'd launched in a rant about how he hated someone else in particular, and all she knew was that they didn't live with them.

She didn't concern herself with it that much.

Kim liked to clap his hand down on her shoulder to get her attention, but it failed to surprise her due to his loud approach. She imagined that if he was silent before touching her, she'd freak out in response.

"What you reading today?" he asked, squeezing her shoulder before letting go.

She looked up with a frown.

He had a cut on his lower lip that had only just stopped bleeding.

In response, she lifted the book up so he'd be able to read the label.

Kim whistled. "All right, smartass."

She didn't take any offence to his words.

It was a rule that they wouldn't steal from each other; whether it was clothes that they left up to dry, to food that was by specific beds, it was there to try and stop everyone from fighting. At night, the older ones pushed heavy objects in front of the door—but only after making sure that everyone was inside—and it was a better system that she'd seen in the past.

Then again, it was quite a while ago that she'd been with the various adults, left there wide-eyed after Nice Lady had disappeared for her short amount of time.

But she was in a more populated area, no longer in a small town where people knew each other. The noise of cars was loud and constant, bins were filled often, and there was countless people that she could steal from.

Marinette had quite a collection of wallets.

She stuck to buying from smaller shops, the ones that weren't too crowded, and she was barely ever turned away. The public toilets scattered everywhere were a good place to clean up, though she wasn't able to see herself in some of the mirrors, and she had a routine that she stuck to.

The only deviation was when she tripped over her shoelaces.

There wasn't anyone she knew around her when it happened.

Marinette let out a pained noise, getting up to her feet with painful knees. She'd scraped her palms, too, and tiny little pebbles were embedded in the bed, beads of blood starting to appear from the impact.

She kept her tears in until she was in a toilet stall.

There was a time when she was given brightly-coloured plasters, a pat on the head for enduring the pain, but that wasn't any more, was it?

And that thought just made her cry more.

She felt tired, curled up on top of the toilet seat. The tissues she'd used had fallen down to the ground when she'd pulled her knees up to her chest, closing her eyes tightly, and all she had to wander was what she was even doing.

She didn't understand what she was even protecting.

Wiping her eyes with too much force, Marinette reached down into her bag, clawing her way to the bottom before she felt the familiar texture of one of the items she'd taken from underneath Aloys' bed. The bandalore looked much the same; innocent, not at all plastic-looking, and she really wanted to know the point of it even was.

She hooked her hand through the small hoop that was attached to a string, frowning as she let it fall, the body of it clattering to the floor unceremoniously, the string barely coming out from the short distance of the fall.

It looked like a toy she'd had before.

With a sniff, she reached down to pick it up before using it properly, as Nice Lady had showed her how to do before. It worked as any other; flicking back up into her palm for her to hold, the weight barely-there, light and unimposing.

It didn't feel like anything special.

She played with it a bit more until she accidentally dropped it again, and when she picked it up to inspect it, it didn't have any scratches on it, no scuff marks or anything to show that it had been misused.

It must've been expensive.

She shoved it back down at the bottom of her bag.

And after that, when she was alone and had nothing better to do, she pulled it out to play with for a few minutes. She practised catching it in her hands, never trying anything too fancy, and it was a fun past-time that she picked up.

Kim had bruises on his face, all of them various colours.

It was because of that that she made the decision to ask him whether he knew any self-defence.

He scrunched his face up at that. "The fuck do you mean with that?"

He was dubious because of her size—barely coming up to his chest—and it was only when she elbowed him in the stomach and managed to make him fall over that he seemed enthusiastic about it at all. Kim was more than happy to tell her about what he did in his fights; reckless, stupid things that he could only just think of on the spot, and even showed her how to throw a punch.

She had to tuck her thumb in.

A few others tried to join them, but Kim promptly told them to fuck off before hauling Marinette up to her feet, taking her into another room in the building.

"Why?" she questioned.

He spat on the floor. "Fucker's never help me much."

There wasn't any venom in his words, though.

He wasn't any adult—he wouldn't be any time soon—and he would never be her adult, but he was kind.

Kim warned her that kindness would get her hurt.

She saw that first hand when a stranger was holding onto someone from their group's arm, and Kim had ran in and punched the stranger in the face without hesitation, trying to get him off.

It ended up with Kim looking before battered than before.

But he was smiling, even with blood coating his teeth.

One night, Marinette was walking back through the park, taking her time. She'd been clean enough to be allowed into a library, able to read the books there, even if she couldn't take them back with her.

With the bandalore in her hand—a presence that was becoming more familiar—she was fiddling with it, the loop securely around her finger, the chances of her losing it lessening.

And with a flick of her hand, the bandalore was back in her palm before she let it go again, the action one that she was slowly getting better at.

Her shoelaces made her fall over again.

But the difference to the last time—where she'd ended up sobbing in a public bathroom—was vastly different. The bandalore had shot out as she let out a noise of surprise, about to collide with the floor, only for her body to lurch forward, the feeling of wind going through her hair as she rapidly moved from where she'd been previously.

She let out a loud breath as she landed in front of a tree, stumbling and falling against the bark, not at all harmed.

Marinette was utterly baffled as she looked to see the bandalore's string wrapped around the trunk, something that definitely _shouldn't_ have happened, and with a panicked glanced behind her, she saw that her original spot was many metres away.

It was impossible.

And yet, the loop was still around her finger, the string from her hand connecting with the bandalore that was wrapped around the tree innocently, looking as though she'd been the one to tie it around it.

But she hadn't.

She hadn't even thrown it that far, definitely not enough for her to be tugged along—

But she wasn't hurt.

She stared at the tree in wonder.

Things were starting to make a lot more sense.

She didn't get the chance to test it out until the following evening. Marinette wanted to be alone, going as far as wandering down an alleyway that looked to be deserted in the dark before squatting down and getting the object out of her bag.

She gripped it tightly.

It looked—it was so simple-looking, no scratches or anything other-worldly about the appearance. But nothing was ever as it seemed, was it?

She played with it normally at first, testing to see whether anything would've changed, but it acted the same as ever.

There was an audible noise as she caught it in her hand.

It was stupid, reckless, and it was something that Kim would've done, but when she looked up to see the roof of the building high above her, she barely hesitated before throwing the bandalore in the air, knowing that she wasn't strong enough to make it reach.

And yet, she could _see_ it soar through the air, reaching higher than it really should've, and there was barely any time to react before she was pulled upwards, hair whipping around wildly along the way.

It was over it seconds.

Somehow, some way, she'd made it onto the roof safely without using the stairs. Marinette was standing on the edge, able to see where the bandalore had chose to wrap around—it was roughly where she'd thrown, but many metres further than it should've gone—and the feeling flowing through her could only be described as glee.

She threw her hands up in the air, cheering, and lost her balance in the process.

But she didn't hit the ground.

The bandalore tugged her back up, her terrified scream being cut off as she was thrust back up onto the roof, much in the same position as she'd been before.

A hysterical laugh escaped her at that.

She was the yo-yo at that point.

Marinette felt giddy.

Gently, she tugged the bandalore off from where it had been wrapped around tightly, somehow able to pull her such a great distance, and she—she felt like she _understood_ why Aloys had been protecting it.

It was a feeling that anyone would've wanted to have.

Maybe, it was because of that feeling that she got carried away.

She stuck to using it in the evenings, when people were unlikely to see her. She'd always been secretive, wanting to keep most things to herself, and the new discovering wasn't any different.

With her hair tucked into a ponytail and the straps of her backpack tightened so they weren't likely to fall off, she continued to test out the bandalore, seeing which things it would attach to.

Almost everything, it seemed.

While it could act like a normal toy, Marinette wasn't sure where the differences actually came in. It seemed that when it wanted to—when it mattered—it behaved fantastically and tugged her along, making her feel the wind on her face as she flew through the air, always landing without hurting herself.

It didn't matter if it was a rooftop, a large tree, or even across the street—if it attached onto something, she was pulled along for the ride.

Her smile was wide, the thrilling feeling absolutely wonderful, no matter how many times she felt it.

She didn't mention it to the others, not giving any more answers than usual. But she did get told that she was smiling more, looking happier than she had been in the beginning, and she really didn't have a reply to that.

She was happy—she knew what she was doing.

At least, that's what she wanted to think.

Marinette's greatest, and worst, idea was when she decided to combine two of her hobbies. After all, no one would be able to catch up to her when she was capable of escaping so quickly, could they?

She wasn't as subtle as usual, didn't watch who she was going to steal from for a while, and chose to instead snatch the bag of the first lady to walk past her in the night.

There was a squawk of protest, shouted insults, but Marinette was off running, the familiar feeling of the bandalore in her hand, and in a matter of moments she was high, far above the ground and out of reach from the woman that was still screaming for her down below.

Laughter escaped her.

It never should've been that easy, but it was.

After searching through the bag, the only things she took back with her was the brightly-coloured umbrella and wallet, not finding use in the rest of it. When she'd looked through all of it, Marinette dropped the bag off the edge of the roof again, letting it fall down to the floor.

The lady wasn't there any more.

The possibilities of what she could do with the bandalore involved was endless. The amount of money she could steal was beyond her imagination—but she didn't do it daily. It would draw attention, wouldn't it?

So, it was only after she'd new clothes to replace the ones that had gotten ruined from her attempts of trying to do fancier things with the bandalore, that she snatched another bag. It was from a male that time, some kind of briefcase that the man had been holding in his hand, and he'd barely turned around before she was running off with it.

The giddy feeling didn't quite leave.

She wondered whether that was why Aloys had kept it hidden away. It made her feel—feel _powerful_, so unlike the small child that she actually was.

And if it could do that for her, she didn't want to think about an adult using it.

The weather was getting hotter again, no need for the fire that they'd had going in the evenings. Still, they used it to cook food—something that everyone there had insisted was useful to know—and she'd even been shown how to ignite it with a lighter a few times.

For all the things they showed her, she didn't share much about herself. Much like before she'd met Adrien, Marinette was mostly quiet, entertaining herself instead of interacting with others, and the only exception to that seemed to be Kim, but that was only because he barged into her business, as though he belonged there.

The make-shift self-defence lessons between them had gotten better.

"I piss off a lot of people, Mari," he said as his explanation for his wounds.

She pursed her lips at that.

"What?" Kim questioned, crossing his arms. "Not going to believe me now?"

Marinette looked at him with raised eyebrows.

"Unbelievable," he muttered, throwing his hands up in exasperation. "I'm not letting you see the shit I get into, you know. You just have to trust me here."

That was the thing, though. Kim went out with others, but he always said that Marinette wasn't allowed to come—that she was too _young_.

Age didn't really seem to matter between them often.

She didn't feel the need to convince him that she could take care of herself; she probably could better than him, but that was only because she had a foolproof method of getting away, as long as the bandalore was within reaching distance.

None of the others had seen it.

However, that did change one evening.

It was an accident.

Marinette had been out for the day, had been in the library looking at books, picking out the ones to help her learn more words, and it was a few hours after it had closed that she was wandering back towards the general direction of the building they lived in.

The looks she got for her attire were still there, but barely anyone approached her and asked where her adults were. It could've been because it was a busy place, with lots of people running through the streets during the daylight, and although it had downsides compared to little towns, she liked that people ignored her most of the time.

The bandalore was in her hand, but she was using it normally, as any other would with a toy. She hummed a tune underneath her breath as she walked, not feeling any urgency to move quicker.

She'd taken to using the bandalore if it started to rain.

"Mari?"

She jumped.

And in the time it took her to turn around, she was able to see Kim closing the distance between them, coming to stand beside her with his hands tucked into the pockets of his dirty jeans.

"What you doing here?" Kim questioned, shooting her a grin that showed his teeth. "Hey—you found that just now?"

Her hand curled around the bandalore, but she wasn't big enough to cover it.

"Shit, I haven't seen this in years," he exclaimed, reaching out to try and take it from her without any hesitation.

And even as Marinette tried to move away, to hold it to her chest, he was bigger, able to just reach over and pluck it from her hands.

She tried to get it back, but Kim put a hand on her head, pushing her away.

With a laugh, he held her away as he inspected the bandalore. "You're still a kid, eh?"

There wasn't enough time.

Marinette was about to jam her elbows into him, anything to get the bandalore away from him, but Kim started to play with it in his hands, only acting as though it was a normal toy for a moment, aiming it at the floor, before it was directed more forward-facing.

She saw him move before she could _feel_ the hand that was removed from the top of her head.

There was no giddy feeling from watching someone else use it; rather, Marinette's stomach clenched uncomfortably, nausea becoming apparent, and it was a matter of seconds of watching Kim's body fly through the sky before the end result happened.

The angle he'd been holding it at made the bandalore latch onto the top of a building, bringing him high up before she could barely even take a few steps, and rather than land gracefully on the floor, she ran to catch up to see what had happened to cause the sickening sound that seemed to echo through the streets.

All that was coming from Kim were gasps and wheezes, not full sentences to communicate anything. The sound of her footsteps as she ran to catch up echoed in her ears, heart beating painfully against her chest, and as she walked into the alleyway, her breath hitched.

He hadn't made it on the roof at all.

She'd hoped, maybe, that she just couldn't see at the angle that she'd been at—

But there was Kim, a crumpled heap on the floor, on his back and staring up at the sky above them. The ever-growing pool of red liquid kept seeping out, steadily coming from more parts of his body—

She choked out a sob.

And as she unsteadily got closer, calling out his name, trying to get a reaction, she was able to see how his legs were bent at awkward angles—not what they were supposed to be, not at all—along with one of his arms that didn't look natural at all.

It wasn't the strong Kim that she'd always seen.

Through her tears, she could make out the little bits of white that were sticking out of his legs, the river of blood that was coming out, and there was no doubt that his legs were unusable at that point. And by the sound of his breathing, the unnatural wet noise that were coming out, it didn't seem like he was going to be okay.

But there, in the hand of the arm that wasn't damaged, was the bandalore.

Kim wasn't responding to her, no matter how she tried.

The pavement dug into the skin of her knees as she kneeled down, hands hovering uncertainly, not knowing where she was supposed to touch. What—what was she supposed to _do_?

It wasn't like Aloys.

Aloys had already been dead, but Kim—Kim was struggling with intake of breath, coughing up blood with his pained breaths.

Her hands wouldn't stop shaking.

The sobs continued as she stayed there, kneeling pathetically by his side, not knowing what to do. As tears ran down her cheeks, she watched as his subtle movements became less and less, and she didn't jump back when the pool of blood had extended to touch her knees, staining her skin.

It wasn't like in the films—Kim didn't die with some nice words that he had to say. He sounded weak, so unlike himself, and hadn't even had the strength to acknowledge her.

The blood didn't stand out against the bandalore when she took it.

-x-

The first time she used one of the daggers, it was when she went off on her own.

Kim was another reminder of someone that she'd lost—that she'd grown close to and cared about—and it was no different to the last time when he'd gone, because one way or another, they always left her.

The thoughts of Aloys and Kim just made her angry as she continued on.

It was in the evening when she took the dagger out, roughly cutting her hair above her ponytail. It wasn't a clean cut, the clumps of hair were uneven, but the emotional weight of dropping the hairband down onto the floor as she walked away meant much more to her than the hair had in the first place.

Nice Lady had liked it, but she was gone.

She'd be fine on her own, wouldn't she?

She couldn't leave herself, after all.

It got easier.

As she got taller, growing used to the new height and trying not to be awkward in her body, she got better at relying on herself. Marinette didn't join a group after what had happened the last time—she got reckless, more than anything else.

A lot of children had treehouses in their gardens.

If she got caught, the bandalore allowed her to escape without anyone being able to catch up to her, and she doubted that they'd report her for what had happened—after all, who would believe a child had escaped with such a thing?

When she found out what grappling hooks were, she laughed a lot.

She took to talking to herself, holding conversations to make sure she was able to pronounce words, and to make up for the silence that was around her for the most part. She'd moved on from the city, but the different towns and villages she went to allowed her into the library, and when she lied and said that her friends or her family was coming soon, sometimes employees let her through into other buildings, even though they really shouldn't.

Although she didn't know how to swim, she liked being let into there first—she'd bought a swimsuit on sale after thinking of that plan, and if all that she needed to do to shower was flash a smile at the employee out front and see whether they were irresponsible or not, she wasn't going to complain.

The amount of people that let her get away with things when she was clean was astounding.

She found out the wonders of a laundromat. It was a lot easier than the washing and drying she'd had with others before, and as she was getting older, not many people questioned her when she said that she lived across the road and was being trusted with doing the chores for the day.

It was possible that her lies were getting more believable.

But that was good, that was fine. She didn't need people butting into her business, asking whether she was okay, or whether she was lost.

She was _fine_.

Marinette just didn't know what she was doing.

Sometimes, when she saw children in their school uniforms, her wind wandered to Adrien, but she never kept her thoughts on him for too long. Adrien hadn't—it wasn't his _choice_ that he'd had to leave, and he'd intended to come back.

She really wondered whether he made it back that second summer or not.

But she knew that nothing good would've come from her being found with Aloys' body—she'd always been warned about that.

And much like with Kim's, she didn't wait around for anyone to find her afterwards. She hadn't even gone back to the abandoned building to collect the blankets and books she kept in her section, only taking her backpack to leave.

She was fine.

It didn't matter that she had conversations with herself, or that she had a collection of wallets in her backpack that didn't belong to her. It was all part of the grand scheme of life, wasn't it?

If people were just going to keep leaving her, she didn't _want_ them.

She wasn't a stranger to violence; she'd seen it countless times, had been on the other end of it when she was unlucky, but it was the cries that attracted her attention that evening.

It was someone holding a knife up to a teenage boy, demanding for his belongings. It was just like when she stole—but _violent_, so different to her quick grab and getaway.

It wasn't that she felt sorry for the boy.

She was curious.

With the bandalore, Marinette flicked her wrist, sending it out to wrap around the attacker's knees in seconds, the string looped around tightly before any of them could comprehend it. And as she'd done with objects, she pulled her hand to the side, curious to see whether it would cause a grown adult to be tugged by her.

Within seconds, the attacker's feet were taken off the floor as they fell back against the wall behind them. The impact had been loud—louder than the pained breath they escaped—and the knife that had been in their hand clattered to the ground.

The boy simply ran away without looking at her.

With a tug of her wrist, the bandalore had returned to her hand, the string back inside as though nothing had ever happened to begin with.

They were making pained noises—wheezing—but that didn't stop her from approaching, kicking the fallen knife away with her foot. Then, when she saw how they were holding onto their chest, the tell-tale signs of blood coming from their mouth, Marinette just walked away.

She didn't feel bad.

They'd—they were holding someone at the end of their knife, demanding for their _things_. They would've done the same to her, wouldn't they?

She hated people that tried to touch her things without permission—it always ended up badly.

Without using any of the self-defence that she'd been taught, none of the punches or violent moves that would give her a chance to escape, she'd taken someone down with only a few flicks of her wrist. Her breathing hadn't even increased from the effort she'd put out—and yet, the only other person that had tried to do the same as her had ended up mangled.

She was only a kid, but she'd been able to do that without breaking a sweat.

Marinette grinned.

-x-

It wasn't like she sought them out on purpose.

It was only natural to see shady-looking people throughout her life. It just happened that in the less populated sections of the city, late at night, was when more appeared than during the day.

The motels of those areas didn't care that she was a kid. If she had the money to spend the night, they let her in.

And it was because of that that she'd overheard shouting in the room next to hers. She hadn't _planned_ to do anything, but their voices were loud, the screams of pain were annoying to listen to, and all she wanted to do was sleep because her head was hurting.

She didn't feel bad when the slamming against the wall was because of her throwing them until they fell unconscious—at least, that's what she thought happened due to the lack of blood—and it meant that she was able to go back to her room and sleep peacefully.

Why would she feel bad about it? Bad things happened to everyone, she knew that, and it wasn't as though they were good people—

She didn't think many people were.

There was always something, wasn't there?

The light-hearted films she'd watched all those summers ago—back in the luxurious home with company by her side—felt more like lies with every passing day.

It was hurt or be hurt, wasn't it?

Sometimes, when she looked in the mirror to see her roughly-chopped hair and gaunt-looking cheeks, she wondered whether anyone would actually recognise her any more.

She laughed at that until she started crying.

But when she really thought about it, why would she feel sorry for anyone else? They didn't genuinely care for her—no one really did, not any more—and their version of help would be turning her over to authorities, the ones she'd heard all the horror stories about.

She was fine by herself, the bandalore ensured that.

She wouldn't leave—she could care for herself. If she needed a new jacket, she could get one, could get any food that she wanted as long as she stole the money for it—

It was the ideal life, wasn't it?

Someone tried to change that.

That probably wasn't their intention. They might've been living day-to-day like her, but when her backpack was snatched off of her back, she was _furious_.

If she hadn't had the bandalore in her hand, it would've been lost forever. The very blades that hadn't been entrusted in her in the first place would've disappeared, meaning that, for sure, she'd failed with the only thing that she was looking after.

She saw red.

But it was dark, the harsh glare of the lights outside making some spots visible, and the mugger had purposely gone down a dark route, surely to get away safely.

It didn't work out that way for them.

It wasn't curiosity that had her wrapping the bandalore around their legs, she didn't flinch as their head hit the ground, and she didn't pay attention to them as she reached down to snatch her bag from their trembling hands.

She didn't check how much damage she'd done.

They hadn't thought about the damage they could've done to her, they had?

There was a lot that she didn't understand.

Kim had always stood up for the others, gotten himself hit instead of them, saying that he was stronger and therefore he could take it—but she didn't want to do that to anyone.

She didn't have any feelings of attachment where she wanted to be suffering instead of them. When she saw someone being hurt, it wasn't because she felt sorry for them that she intervened—it was anger, fury that she knew that no one would've done anything if she was in their place.

It didn't matter to anyone that she was a child, did it? Her time alone had proved that—from having her bag stolen, to an adult scolding her and telling her to sleep somewhere else, or the countless people turning up their noses at her and not giving her any attention.

If she was so little in their eyes, _why_ should she care?

Something had to go wrong eventually.

It was the usual routine; Marinette stealing a bag and using height to her advantage, not wasting any time before checking the bag to see her spoils.

But—but there was a noise in front of her, a breathy chuckle, and her breath caught as she saw someone standing in front of her.

They hadn't been there before—she'd been _alone_.

"Interesting," they said—no, it was a woman, one with tight clothing and perfected make-up—and leaned down, lips curling into a wide smile that didn't look welcoming at all. "I admit, I was planning to snap your neck, but this might be more fun."

She stilled, the bandalore feeling heavy in her pocket.

It was the woman she'd taken the bag from, but they should've been on the floor. No one had been able to catch up to her before, so why would it be any different that evening? There was nothing in the woman's hand, no bandalore that allowed her up to such a great height, and yet, there she was.

The grin widened. "Nothing to say to that, darling?"

Marinette swallowed, the grip she had on the stolen bag tightening.

"Not very smart, are you?" the woman observed, tilting her head as she looked at her.

It just made Marinette angry. Who—who was she to even _say_ that?

Something must've shown on her face, because the woman let out a laugh again. "Oh?" she said, clearly amused. "Maybe you do have a bit of fire in you. What a shame, I'll have to snuff that out of you."

It didn't make any sense.

"Let's forget this, shall we?" the woman proposed, reaching out and tugging the bag out of Marinette's grip. Then, it was tossed to the side carelessly, the contents of it spilling out without the woman looking at it at all. "You're much more interesting. Tell me, what made you think you'd be able to get away with it?"

This was the only person to ever catch her and she just—Marinette didn't understand how.

The woman ran a finger along Marinette's jawline, pushing her chin up to make her look at her. "Where is it?"

Marinette stared at her as blankly as she could.

Nails started to dig into her skin. "I'm only going to consider sparing your life if you talk, child. Come on."

But the bag had been tossed aside.

The hand trailed down to her throat, squeezing gently. "The weapon," the woman said slowly, pronouncing each syllable carefully. "Where is it?"

The weight felt heavy in her pocket.

The grip tightened. "_Where_?"

It was a risk that she had to take.

"Back—backpack," Marinette rasped, finding it hard to talk normally with the pressure on her throat.

The woman pushed her with enough force for Marinette to stumble to the side, her hands catching her and stopping her face from hitting the floor painfully, and she couldn't even protest as the backpack was taken off of her back.

But before the woman could make it to the bottom of the backpack, too busy searching through the food and clothing that she had at the top, Marinette got out the bandalore from her pocket, and with a flick of her wrist, the string was tightly wrapped around her body.

Marinette didn't take any chances.

With a tug, the woman was shooting off to the left, the sound of her body hitting the neighbouring building almost deafening, and Marinette flinched as she beckoned the bandalore back, hearing the sound of a body hitting the floor.

She didn't need to look over the edge to see the result.

Her backpack had been knocked over, but it was there—with _her_.

She packed her bag again, carefully putting the contents back in. Her hands were scratched, throat felt a bit sore, but it wasn't anything worse than she'd had before.

There wasn't any time to think about her victory, though.

Marinette heard something.

It wasn't—it didn't sound _normal_, not really. It was a mixture of pained noises, cracks of bones, and it was her curiosity that had her edging towards the edge of the building to see what was happening down below that was so close that she could actually hear.

The pool of blood didn't have a body in it.

She stared.

With sweating palms, Marinette hastily went back to her bag, taking the bandalore out, just for the feeling of safety. The woman shouldn't have been able to get beside her in the first place, and for her to walk away after a fall like _that_?

It went against everything she knew.

It was the noise that gave it away again.

Marinette tumbled out of the way, the bandalore wrapped around a pipe to pull her along, and she barely missed the body that would've collided with her. And as she scrambled to her feet, she saw the bloodied body that was standing before her—

Except there wasn't any visible broken bones, no limbs bent out of place, and she could barely make out any cuts where the blood was smeared across the skin.

Her stomach lurched.

The only reason she had the upper-hand was because of the bandalore, she knew that. Even with the self-defence that she knew, it wouldn't do anything in the long run, not when she was tiny. Catching someone off-guard once was completely different to someone actually trying to _attack_ her.

The string were wrapped around the woman in a matter of moments, causing her to fall to the floor. Marinette didn't toss her off the roof again, instead watching as the woman struggled, trying to break free from the hold.

But she knew that it wasn't possible. For as strong as the string was, they couldn't cut through anything—but they were strong enough to snap things, weren't they?

The fall hadn't broken her bones, so would it even work?

Marinette's grip on the bandalore tightened. "Why?"

It was a grown woman, someone almost twice her height, but it had been so one-sided. It wasn't the fights that Kim had gotten in that always resulted in him sporting bruises, not the bloodied face that Aloys had had before—her knees and palms were her only injuries.

And all she could feel was anger.

The woman just spat out a mouthful of blood on the floor.

Marinette pulled the string towards her, making the hold tighter. "How did you get up here?"

That was all that needed to be said to make her laugh, apparently.

"Get—get up here?" the woman repeated through her laughter, the noise loud and imposing. "You don't know anything, do you?"

It just made her angrier.

She was just—Marinette was so fed up with people assuming things about her. And for this woman, someone who surely should've been _dead_, to be right about something?

It was infuriating.

With a flick of her wrist, the string adjusted, wrapping around the woman's throat, mirroring how Marinette had been choked all those minutes ago. She didn't feel bad as she saw the woman wince, only pulling tighter, able to see how it was digging into the exposed skin of her neck.

She made it loose only to demand, "Explain."

The laughter she received was the last thing she wanted to hear.

Marinette tightened to grip again, watching as the woman started to choke, not able to breathe properly, and she kept her hold there. The woman wasn't taller than her what she was on the floor, wasn't able to look down on her, and yet the echoing of her laughter was still in her ears—

When she loosened it again, she wasn't disturbed by the blotchy quality of the woman's skin.

"You—you can't kill me," was wheezed out, not at all the smooth-sounding voice that had taunted her. Then, after a series of coughs that sounded painful, she said, "I heal faster than you can hurt, darling."

It didn't make any sense.

Again, Marinette asked, "Why?"

"Because I'm better than you." The words were emphasised with a bloody smile. "You are nothing compared to me."

It was so out of place. Marinette wasn't the one tied up at that moment, unable to use her arms.

The woman just let out another laugh. "Break my neck, I dare you."

Marinette adjusted her grip on the bandalore.

"I'll just be back in a matter of minutes," the woman cooed, not at all sounding scared of the situation she was in. "I'll hunt you down, sweetheart."

It was the petname that caused her to react. Marinette could deal with the petty words, the insults thrown at her face—but for someone to call her _that_?

It wasn't the fond tone that it had always been before—there was no kind and wrinkled face to go with it, no; rather, it was a face without any visible wounds, but the blood seeping into the hair and staining the skin and clothes gave a lot away about how their state had been only a few minutes ago.

She didn't know what to think.

She knew—she knew that no one else could do what she could, and for someone to _attack_ her?

There wasn't any reason to care about them, was there?

It was that realisation that made her body relax, the stiffness leaving her body. The woman couldn't get out of her hold, couldn't do anything more than sit there awkwardly with the strong holding them still, but Marinette could do whatever she wanted.

She wasn't a powerless child.

It was a matter of pulling the weapon—for that was what the woman had called it—closer to her, tightening the hold and watching as the effects started to take place. The noises weren't pretty, nor was the way the woman trashed, and Marinette only took a step back when she stopped struggling in her hold.

She didn't feel sorry for her at all.

It was ridiculous, she knew, but she kept the woman wrapped up, just to see whether anything that she'd said would come true. After all, Marinette didn't know everything, did she?

The bandalore was proof of that.

And in a matter of seconds—as fast as it had been for her to not look over the ledge to see the body down below—air filled the woman's lungs, the sound of tell-tale gasps of breaths becoming apparent.

Marinette loosened the hold, only just enough to allow her to breath.

Her hands were shaking.

The woman was wheezing, the pained noises from before, and when she snapped her eyes open to stare at Marinette, the wide smile that spread across their lips was almost disturbing to see.

"Not bad, kid," she remarked. "But snapping my neck would've given you more time."

It was filled with fake confidence that Marinette wasn't going to believe. If the woman could've escaped, she would've done so before.

There was so much she wanted to do.

This was someone else that wasn't normal—sure, they seemed deranged, but the knowledge is what she wanted.

It was because of that that Marinette asked softly, "How?"

"How am I alive?" the woman asked for clarification, seeming to preen underneath the attention. "Is that really the question you really want to be asking right now?"

She tightened the string. "You can't leave."

"No, but I can fucking slaughter you when you try and escape." The woman winked. "You can't stay here forever, like me, can you?"

Marinette wetted her lips. "Why can you?"

The laughter she heard wasn't sincere. "Do you think I'm going to spill my secrets to you?"

What was she supposed to _do_?

The woman should've been dead two times by that point, but she just—she kept coming back without any visible wounds. The redness that had been on her neck from where she'd suffocated had disappeared, skin returning back to the colour it had before, and even though the change had happened in front of Marinette's very eyes, she couldn't fully comprehend it.

She'd never been taught what to do when faced with the impossible.

Marinette's voice wasn't steady as she asked, "You'll—you'll kill me?"

The cackle she got in return was loud.

It was what she'd always been told, wasn't it? That she had to stop the problem before it was able to hurt her any further?

The woman in front of her wasn't a good person—and from what she'd seen, Marinette wasn't even sure that she could've been classed as a person at all.

For all the people she'd escaped with the bandalore, this was one that could catch up.

There was no choice, was there?

Marinette reached to the side, bringing her backpack closer. With her eyes on the woman—who was still smiling widely, the blood around their mouth dried and no longer glistening—she dug through her bag until she felt the case of one of the swords.

It would be a lot different to cutting hair.

But when she took the case off, the handle of the dagger fitting perfectly in her hand, the woman just laughed more, seeming to find the sight hysterical.

"A _knife_?" the woman choked out through her laughter, sounding genuinely amused. "Do you really think you can harm me with that puny human weapon, sweetheart?"

There it was again.

_Sweetheart_.

All she'd used the dagger for before was cutting her hair. That had been simple, easy, the blade feeling light in her hands and not awkward like the wooden swords she'd been trained with, all that time ago. She was confident that she could use it—especially against someone that couldn't _move—_but the question was whether she really wanted to go through with it.

But as the woman thrashed, looking at Marinette with that same smile that wasn't at all nice to see, the answer was clear.

Marinette had already killed her twice with the bandalore, hadn't she?

What was the difference?

She adjusted her hold on the blade, taking a step closer.

It just made the woman laugh more.

But if it was between the two of them, Marinette would always choose herself. That's what she was taught, wasn't it? Running for help wouldn't do much in that situation—the woman had been able to get onto the roof in seconds, catching up with her.

And if she wasn't sure that she could outrun her, she didn't have much choice.

Her life was hers, wasn't it? The woman saying that she'll kill her—that was worse than her backpack being stolen, wasn't it?

No one had taught her about where to hurt someone with a blade. Aloys' lessons hadn't covered that, not really, and Kim was too reluctant to teach her about the little blade she'd seen him put in his pockets at times.

Going for the heart seemed to be the best bet.

But when she took another step closer, gripping the knife with two hands to keep it steady—the bandalore wrapped around her wrist before being put in her pocket, impossible for someone else to get—the woman threw her head back and laughed.

She snickered. "You really think that'll hurt me?"

Marinette pursed her lips.

"My body will be fixed before you can even run away, _sweetheart_."

It was the word that urged her on, not the crazed look in the woman's eyes.

The dagger went in smoothly, as though she was cutting butter, and the amount of force that she'd put in it meant that her knuckles touched the woman's shirt in seconds. The slide had been easy, no resistance, and Marinette didn't know enough about the human body to say whether it was correct or not.

But as the blood started to touch her hands, the woman falling limp in seconds, she stared down at what she'd accomplished with horror.

It had—it was just been so _easy_.

And even when she pulled her hand back, taking out the sword and causing spurts of blood to come out—a rapid amount that stained the woman's shirt, gushing down to the ground—she still didn't feel sorry for the woman.

There was blood on her hands, spurts of it had gotten onto her clothing, and the slow-forming puddle on the floor was strange to look at.

But, before she could do more than wipe the knife on the inside of her jacket, something happened.

It wasn't someone impossibly following her up onto a roof twice, but it was close.

The woman's body just—it _disappeared_.

Except that wasn't quite right.

In the few seconds between where a bleeding body had been in front of her and she'd looked away, all that was left was a pile of ash that was settling down on the floor. No remains of clothing, no hair, no _bones—_

It was utterly baffling.

That hadn't happened when she'd thrown her off the building, or even when she'd choked, but for the knife to cause _that_?

She stared at the blade in her hand in wonder.

It had to be the reason it was hidden away in the first place.

-x-

She got taller again.

Marinette traded out her old clothes for new ones, even buying a pair of scissors to fix her haircut in a bathroom, and she continued to live day-to-day.

The only difference to before was that she had more of a sense of purpose. It wasn't just the bandalore that she was protecting—though, there had still only been one person that had recognised it. It could be classed as a weapon, after all.

She wanted to know what type of people Aloys had been involved with.

But she couldn't really do that, not without going to his contacts and trying to get information out of them. She didn't see any reason why they would willingly give anything up to a child, not after the first visit had ended up so terribly.

She didn't need someone to let her use their shower and eat their food. She was perfectly capable of taking care of herself.

Bags were easy to steal as a whole, wallets fun to pluck out of pockets when she pretended to bump into people, and she especially liked taking them out of pockets while adults were looking around the supermarket, not paying attention.

It was easy.

But that easiness reminded her of how the blade had slid so easily into a body.

Marinette was curious.

It was because of that that she tested the blade out on different things—from fallen branches, trunks of trees, and most nature-related things that she passed on her way—and she found that all of them required the same amount of effort: almost none.

Wasn't that _strange_?

The blade didn't even feel heavy to her, not even when she dared to put one in each hand. They were small enough that she could do that, but she had no idea how to actually move with them. She'd only been taught how to use a sword—

She continued to keep one at the bottom of her bag, hidden.

How was she supposed to find out any more about what she had?

Going into a library and typing the text into a search engine didn't bring up any results—not that she thought that it would—and she doubted that the information would be in any of the books inside. She'd never seen any strange books in Aloys' house that could've told her, and it had been years since that time, so, surely, someone would've cleared his house out after he was found.

So, going back there was out of the question.

And even if she hated not having the information herself, that she had to reach out to someone for help, she did eventually give in and take out the small booklet that Aloys had left her.

She'd made a cross beside the first name in her anger the first time, and the rest were all untouched.

Rather than going to the second home, Marinette checked the addresses with a local map, trying to see which was closest to her.

To her disappointment, the closest was an hour or two away in a large city. It had advantages, though; she was sure there'd be a rough-looking area that wouldn't question if she wanted to stay the night in a motel, and she wouldn't be looked at strangely for not having anyone else with her when she was alone.

It was with that that she slowly made her way there.

She wasn't in any rush. It was just setting herself up for disappointment, wasn't it?

It wasn't clear whether turning up and saying that Aloys had sent her would even matter, not when he'd been dead for years. He'd kept in contact with his friends often—if they could've even been classed that—and as she'd never actually been mentioned, it was just trying to get someone to believe her.

What if they were just as unaware as her? She wasn't going to get the weapons out of her bag and show them, not at all. The time Kim had seen it had been a mistake enough, and the woman on the roof—

That still baffled her.

She didn't use the sword again to injure someone.

It wasn't because she was scared of it—certainly not, she was just confused—but due to the only times someone had bugged her, whether it be to try and get her wallet or she saw them doing something dubious, the bandalore was more than enough. There wasn't much that they could do when they were yanked out of nowhere, crashing into nearby objects and wheezing.

It kind of made her feel like a superhero.

The first time she thought that, remembering the stuff that she'd used to watch with Adrien, she'd laughed until she had tears in her eyes.

That seemed like a lifetime ago.

When she made it into the city, she didn't go to her destination immediately. She tried to familiarise herself with the streets first, trying to get used to it and roughly know which direction she needed to go.

She also made sure she wasn't dirty when she turned up.

Her haircut was lopsided, shirt didn't match the jacket she had on on top of it, but it was _hers_.

The house wasn't large. It was small, no room to park a car in the front of it, and it had countless potted plants in the front, taking up most of the room. She stared at the red-coloured front door for more than needed, wondering whether she was doing the right thing.

Her backpack was digging into her shoulders.

It took her a few minutes to convince herself to knock on the door.

When the door opened, Marinette had taken a step back, about to walk away from the time that it had taken. An old man was revealed, wrinkles clear on his skin, and grey hairs the most prominent on his head and facial hair.

The polite smile he gave her didn't ease her nerves.

Marinette jumped straight to the point. "Fu Wang?"

He nodded, smile widening. "Yes, that's me. And who might you be?"

"Aloys sent me."

The old man tilted his head to the side, curious. "Aloys Guerin, you say?"

That was the thing, though—Marinette didn't _know _his last name. It hadn't turned up in conversation, hadn't been something that Aloys had deemed important for her to know. He'd simply said to say his name.

So, she just nodded her head.

His smile showed that he was missing teeth. "Come in, then."

As she wasn't asked to take her shoes off at the door, she trekked mud in with her. The old man—Fu, as he confirmed—walked along steadily, not turning around to see whether she was following.

It was as awkward as the first home that she'd visited.

"What can I do for you?" Fu asked after he'd gestured for her to sit down beside him in the living room. "Consider me curious that Aloys reached out to you after all this time."

She perched herself awkwardly on the edge of the sofa. "Aloys is dead."

"Yes, I'm well aware of that," Fu replied patiently, his smile not reaching his eyes. "So, that begs that question, why are you here?"

Fu was more suspicious than the other. But she didn't blame him—Aloys had been dead for years at that point, hadn't reached out to Fu at all, and for her to appear after so long, saying that she'd been sent by him? It didn't add up well.

Marinette chose to reach into her backpack, retrieving the contact book that Aloys had given her, flipping to the page that had Fu's information on it.

Fu hummed, leaning back in his seat. "It's certainly his handwriting, but it doesn't answer any of my questions."

What was she even _doing_?

She wasn't going to spill her life story for some stranger—she didn't even want to be there. The only reason that she'd appeared at all was because she wanted to know whether he had any information about what Aloys had been hiding.

It was a risk, but she announced, "Aloys was training me."

Because he _was—_just with swords and taking care of herself, not to do his job (no matter what it even _was_).

Fu looked at her, considering. "Was he?"

She looked him in the eyes and said, "Yes."

There was a beat of silence.

Then, to her surprise, Fu let out a laugh.

"He's always had mad ideas, that one," he mused, as though he _believed_ her. "And with your age, I can see why he sent you here."

That was all that needed to be said, apparently. Rather than just offering her a shower and food, Fu went as far as to say that she could use his spare bedroom whenever she needed, and that she could just help herself.

She didn't trust him.

Why would anyone willingly share what they had with her? If the situations were reversed, she couldn't say whether she'd trust someone that much to share her space. And yet, Fu was friendly to her, asking all sorts of questions, even going as far as to say that she didn't need to reply if she didn't feel comfortable.

And she really didn't.

She wasn't going to just stay with some strange man. He may have been a friend of Aloys', but she wasn't the trusting kind.

The bathroom had a lock on it, along with the bedroom, but that still wasn't enough to get her to stay. Fu even went as far as to ask whether she wanted to have meals with him, all of which she expected.

It was just—it didn't make _sense_.

Fu wasn't asking about her age, not after that one comment. He hadn't asked anything of importance, really, and hadn't brought up the topic of the one mutual person that they had in common.

She slipped out the window the first night, her backpack surely on her back.

When she returned the following morning, Fu remarked, "You could use the front door, you know."

_Why_ was he even opening up his home to her in the first place?

She asked him on the second day.

Fu just grinned. "Because we have the same goal, don't we?"

It wasn't the answer that she was looking for. "Why?"

"Why do you think I live here?" he replied, leaving no room for her to interject. "The same as you, I suspect."

Fu liked not giving her straight answers, then.

And even though he repeated that she could stay for as long as she wanted, even if it was just for meals, she still didn't trust him. Why would she? It was an adult that wasn't giving her actual answers, making it so she had to read between the lines and be utterly confused.

She asked quietly, "Why aren't you telling me?"

Fu smiled patiently. "If Aloys really sent you here, then you'll know."

That meant _nothing_.

She didn't stay a second night.

Marinette was angry when she left, feeling useless and small—something she loathed more than anything else. She'd spent so long looking after herself, making it so she could feel safe with herself, and for someone to make her feel anything else was infuriating.

It just meant that the contact list was another bust.

She didn't even try and look for a third home to visit, not even after all those years. Marinette stuffed the booklet to the bottom of her bag bitterly, knowing that she was capable of looking after herself. She didn't need some old man taking pity on her and opening up his home to her, not the blind trust that made her terrified.

It just wasn't logical.

So, she continued doing what she did best—stealing.

The city was prime for the taking, it turned out. The streets were busy, even at the beginning of the night, and there were countless places were intoxicated strangers stumbled into the street, barely noticing when their belongings were snatched.

She didn't have to sleep outside, not when there was multiple options for her to choose from.

She grew braver in her spare time, sometimes eating her food while sitting on the edge of rooftops, her legs dangling off.

A thought crossed through her mind a lot when she did that, wondering whether falling would feel any different to the bandalore. The wind would still go through her roughly-chopped hair, yes, but would it _feel_ like something else entirely?

She didn't find out.

While she kept to herself for the most part, Marinette ended up sharing her food with a stray cat.

It made her wonder where Nice Lady was, and whether she would've chastised Marinette to give dogs a chance again.

The thought made her laugh.

There wasn't much significant about her days. She'd wandered back to Fu's place once or twice, but she'd never made it to the front door, too annoyed with the lack of answers she'd been given beforehand. The old man had no reason to help her out in the first place, so for her to expect explanations—without even revealing what was in her backpack in the first place—seemed ridiculous.

She was as territorial with her possessions as ever.

It was while she was eating dinner one evening, her legs dangling from the rooftop, that she saw that someone from down below was being followed. The only reason she even noticed what was happening was due to the clothing covering the person that was doing the following, along with them glancing over their shoulder to see whether anyone was following them, too.

She wasn't going to jump in and save anyone.

Marinette didn't feel the need to vent her anger at that moment, busy savouring the food that she'd got from a stall a few streets over, and it was just coincidence that she had a view of what was happening down below.

The person being followed was a woman with a young child—small, tiny, and holding onto their mother's hand.

In a matter of moments, the child was shoved aside with enough force that when they hit the wall, cracks appeared in the brick, and the lifeless body dropped down to the floor before the mother could even react properly.

Then, when she went to scream, the covered person took the mother's neck in their hands, cutting off the noise. The mother was tossed to the side, too, neck looking to be bent at an awkward angle.

It was over in less than a minute.

That was—that was one of the worst people that Marinette had seen. There hadn't been any hesitation in what they'd done, no chance for either of the victims to get away, and Marinette—

Marinette wondered how they'd managed to do it at all.

She put her food to the side.

Falling felt easy, familiar, something that she did daily. She kept her eyes on the covered figure that was walking to the other end of the alleyway, not turning around to look at the bodies that were left behind, and it was because of that that just a flick of her wrist had the string of the bandalore wrapping around their legs, causing them to fall over.

And to be safe, she made it so the rest of their body was restrained, too.

She was curious whether someone with such strength could break from her hold.

The person thrashed in her hold, muttering curses underneath their breath, and Marinette didn't feel any sympathy as she took one blade out of the case, approaching the fallen figure.

It went in like butter.

But—but where the woman had stopped struggling before, all it caused this person to do was let out a choked noise, a strangled screech of pain escaping them.

That wasn't right, though. Had she missed the heart?

She twisted the blade that was still embedded in their back.

"What—fuck _off_," was hissed, a wet-sounding cough following the words. "Are you fucking—fucking stupid?"

She adjusted the dagger upwards a bit.

But as the blood poured out, and noises escaped the person below her, it didn't do anything to stop them from struggling, trying to get away from her. They were just as energetic as before, not ceasing to breathe as they should've been, and she was utterly confused as she kneeled down beside them.

It was because of her confusion that she asked, "Why aren't you dead?"

The only response she got was a series of swears.

It didn't take any effort to take the blade out. Marinette smoothed out the person's clothing on their back, lining up the weapon with the right area, and she plunged it in again.

It was the same as before.

Then, as she inspected closer, smearing blood on her hands as she moved the clothing to take a closer look at the wounds she'd inflicted, her stomach churned uncomfortably as she realised something damning.

The first cut she'd delivered had healed.

The fresh blood was still there—on the skin, soaked into the shirt—but the actual cut wasn't _there_.

But the lady on the roof had vanished, ceased to _exist_, after a strike to the heart.

The answer didn't come from her mind or the body in front of her.

Rather, it came from behind her.

"There's another heart."

Marinette whirled around, the bloodied dagger in her hands, and on a reflex she clutched the bandalore tighter, surely causing it to dig in viciously to the fallen stranger's skin.

The fallen body snarled out, "Don't you fucking _dare—_"

The last person she expected to see in front of her again was Fu.

And yet, there he was, walking closer and coming to stand by her side, not at all looking disturbed by how he found her. Blood was covering her hands, no doubt on her outfit, and she had a grown adult tied up on the floor with a steady puddle of blood growing below them.

But that didn't scare him, apparently.

Fu used his aged hands to pull his trousers up before he kneeled beside the body, reaching out to tap the other side of the chest.

"Here," he said. "It should be somewhere over here, if I'm correct."

Marinette was still standing there, a droplet of blood dripping off the blade as she stared at him.

Fu's smile reached his eyes. "Why don't you find out?"

It was just—so _confusing_.

Shouldn't he be calling for help? Telling her that it wasn't right to hurt someone?

But that wasn't happening at all. Fu's expression was gentle, completely contrasting the situation, and he tapped his fingers on the spot that he was indicating to, coaxing her to come closer.

She kneeled down in her previous position cautiously.

The struggles and insults from the person were ignored, neither her or Fu answer to them, and she stared at the old man, trying to see whether he was joking or not. Was it a test that she didn't know about?

It didn't matter, though.

Her original goal had been to get rid of a dangerous person before they could somehow harm her in the future. If she really let someone out there continue to walk around when she had the chance to stop them, wasn't it only smart to get rid of them in the first place?

They couldn't trouble her, then.

It was a matter of protecting herself, wasn't it?

Fu didn't move his hand as she lined the blade up with his fingers, plunging it in with ease. She held it there, staring at the struggling body for a moment before she looked up to see Fu's expression.

Fu was staring at her, not the person that she'd just stabbed with his guidance.

It was her grip on the blade that made it so it didn't clatter to the floor when the body turned into ash. As before, there wasn't any blood, clothing, any kind of remains that showed a person had been there at all—and it had all happened in the time it had taken her to blink.

"I think there's much we need to discuss," Fu announced, his knees cracking as he stood up. "It would be wise for us to leave here first, however. I'd hate for you to be caught red-handed, literally."

She looked at the blood on her hands before back at him.

Of all the things she could've said, all she asked was, "Why?"

Fu cocked his head slightly to the side. "Tell me, what do you know about demons?"


	2. 02

**AN: **Here you go, Chek! It's finished before next year (somehow). A reminder that there's a violence, blood, murder, and not the best decisions in life in this story. Adrien's back, Marinette's got a new friend, and I really, really need to sleep.

_Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Chat Noir © Thomas Astruc_

Time was passing slowly.

There was only ten minutes left of the class, but Marinette had finished her test a while ago. Barely anyone was still writing—some were tapping their pencils on the desk, trying to amuse themselves—and Marinette was staring at the clock on the wall, willing for it to go faster.

It was mundane, that was the best way to describe it.

When the bell rang, she didn't make conversation with anyone else. She collected her bag from outside, slipped her headphones on, and put her hood over her head.

No one stopped her on her way out.

Other students walked together in groups, had parents come to pick them up, but Marinette ambled along, selecting the music on her phone.

The school uniform was pretty generic. The blazer had the logo on the breast, but other than that, the shirt and skirt were both a plain colour, one that didn't stand out if she didn't find the time to change afterwards.

Marinette wore shoes that were designed for running, and since she'd had to replace almost all of her wardrobe, she'd chosen clothes that were athletic for their use, rather than their looks.

By the time she'd finished walking her usual route and had arrived at the diner on the other side of the city, she wasn't the first there.

"Hi," Marinette greeted curtly, tossing her backpack into her side of the booth first, rolling up the sleeves of her jacket.

"About fucking time," was the muttered response she got to that.

Marinette just blew her fringe away from her face. "I live across the city."

"So, skip class," her acquaintance remarked. "You've done it before."

"Maybe next time," Marinette replied. "You didn't say it was urgent."

Chloé didn't sit up from where she was stretched out across the seat, legs dangling off the end, looking far too comfortable for how dingy the diner actually was. "Do you want to know or not?"

"Food first," she said. "I'm hungry."

Chloé made an aggravated noise. "Hey—"

"I need to eat," Marinette snapped. "If you want me to do this tonight, suck it up."

It wasn't a friendship.

But when they were sat across from each other, similar in age, it was easy to understand why everyone else assumed so. Hell, Marinette used it to her advantage at times, but she couldn't see Chloé actually caring about her in the upcoming future.

And they'd known each other for over a year at that point.

Chloé sat up with a dramatic sigh, tossing her blonde-coloured hair over her shoulder. "Fine, but I need it this time. You're not screwing me over again."

"Is it really screwing you over if I get it done?" Marinette mused, lifting up a hand to gesture for a waitress to come over. "It's not like you're paying me."

"Your life is your payment," Chloé dryly replied.

Marinette's laughter wasn't forced.

For as much as she disliked conversing with others, there was something different about Chloé. It wasn't that she just understood; rather, it was beneficial for the both of them to tolerate each other.

"You're younger today," Marinette noted.

Chloé raised her middle finger up at her.

When the waitress came over, neither of them indulged in small talk.

"I think I might be older," she pointed out.

Chloé raised her eyebrows. "But not taller."

"I'm an orphan," Marinette deadpanned. "I need love to grow."

Chloé smile showed her white teeth. "You're stuck forever, then."

There wasn't anything other-worldly about her. Chloé looked youthful, the same as any other young teenager with bright eyes and unwrinkled skin, but that could change in a blink of an eye.

Her clothes couldn't, though.

It was a learning curve, coming to terms with that.

"Who's it today?" she asked after the waitress had dropped off their drinks.

"Some asshole who thought I was below them yesterday," Chloé responded, taking a few napkins and starting to rip little pieces off. "Fucking ridiculous, right? And I hate his smug face, so this'll be good."

Marinette took a deliberate sip of her drink. "If you're above him, why do you need me?"

"To avoid suspicion," Chloé shot back in a no-nonsense tone. "I need to be elsewhere, or everyone's going to look at me."

She snorted. "And why's that?"

"Because he hates me," was the response she got to that. "And I'm fed up with it."

It wasn't as though it was any different to usual. There was no reason for Marinette to ask about their backstory; she didn't care what position they had in society, but the knowledge that Chloé was close enough to them to be blamed was interesting.

She asked, "What's your alibi going to be, then?"

"Fuck if I know," Chloé replied. "I'll go drink with them or some shit. It'll be fine."

Marinette stirred her drink with her straw, causing the ice to make noise against the glass. "What would you rate him, then?"

Chloé sighed loudly. "Seven?"

She sat up straighter. "Seven, really?"

"Yeah, that seems about right," Chloé confirmed. "Why? You think last time was a fluke?"

Marinette's grin didn't reach her eyes. "Want to find out?"

"Fuck off."

The food was greasy, not the best quality, but it was what she was used to. Marinette didn't splurge often; she tended to stick to the deals, going to the cheapest places, not really caring about the expensive things in life.

The most expensive things she owned were her shoes.

When she parted with Chloé, they didn't hug, not like she saw her class-mates doing at school.

"You better not fucking fail," Chloé threatened.

Marinette grinned. "We'll see."

She didn't go home.

The sun had already started to set, but she needed to be on the other side of the city again. It was without a pounding heart that she retrieved the bandalore from her bag, slipping the loop over her finger in a familiar way, one that was instinctual at that point.

She stuck to the outskirts, away from the busy roads, avoiding the places that she was most likely to be seen. And if someone really did glance upon her, she was gone in a blink, leaving them to wonder whether she'd been there in the first place.

The wind that caressed her cheeks didn't fill her with exhilaration, the smooth landing didn't fill her with her wonder as she stared down great distances, and she didn't have to ponder how long it would take her to get to her destination.

Not after years.

She settled down on the rooftop across from her destination, placing her bag down right beside her. Marinette got out her textbook and the homework she needed to do, putting her headphones back on to pass the time.

It was a good way to pass the time, one she was more than comfortable with.

The alarm on her phone sounded.

She didn't even look at Chloé's messages. If it was truly important, she would've called to tell her to call off the plan.

After putting her belongings back into her bag, Marinette stood up, leaving it on the rooftop. The bandalore was securely in her hand, and with it she thrust her arm out, travelling the distance across the street.

Rather than landing on the opposite roof, she used her momentum to swing down, feet connecting violently with a window as the glass smashed, allowing her access through into the apartment. With a tug of her hand, the bandalore had returned back into her hand as she rolled, standing up with only the slightest of pain in her body.

She ignored the cuts across her.

Her entrance had been loud, abrupt and dramatic enough to command attention, but there was only one occupant that was in the room.

Chloé was right about that.

Marinette ducked before a fist could hit her, using the bandalore to tug herself across the room, narrowly missing the punch that left a large dent in the wall, causing spiderwebs of damage to spread as he removed his arm, no broken bones or damage in sight.

It was over in a matter of seconds.

The cord of the bandalore wrapped around his legs, causing him to tumble to the ground. The string was wrapped too tightly for him to move, enough so that that his breaths were laboured and wheezing as he tried to recover from the sudden fall.

"Seven?" Marinette scoffed.

Ignoring the threats that were spat out, Marinette went to retrieve her phone from her pocket before realising that she'd forgotten it on the rooftop.

She went to the front door instead, making sure that it was locked. And with a look through the small glass hole, she confirmed that no one had come to the aid of her victim, that none of the neighbours had been bothered from the noise—if they were even in in the first place.

She could've been less dramatic, chosen to knock on the front door instead, but it was more of a thrill to be reckless.

Her injuries didn't bother her, not when they weren't life-threatening.

But as she continued to wait, to see whether Chloé would turn up at the allotted time, the struggled cries from the living room started to get louder.

She got a tea-towel from the kitchen, scrunching it up in her hand.

It was getting it into his mouth that was the hard part.

With ease, Marinette retrieved her blade from the strap underneath her skirt, taking it out of the sheath and kneeling down beside the tied body in front of her.

"If you don't open your mouth, I'm going to stab your heart," she said.

He tried to spit at her.

The knife was as sharp as ever. It cut through the material and skin without any resistance, plunging into the man's chest, right where his human heart would've been located.

And as he cried in pain, Marinette took her chance, stuffing in tea-towel into his mouth, muffling the noise. It also made it easier to concentrate when they couldn't taunt her, talking about how they'd hunt her down, do so many terrible things—

It got terribly boring after a while.

Marinette wandered into the kitchen, taking her time washing her hands, using a lot of soap to get the sticky liquid off of her skin. There hadn't been any knocks at the door, and it seemed that Chloé wasn't going to make it in time.

Well, not if she didn't want to wait around all night.

It was never part of the deal that Marinette had to devote hours to make sure that Chloé had to be there, not when it would still benefit her—though not as much—otherwise.

When she walked back into the living room, she closed the curtains. There were glass shards all over the floor, the window was absolutely wrecked, and she was sure that if it hadn't been dark, or if the apartment was on a lower floor, people would've noticed the havoc.

Maybe his neighbours hated him and that was why they didn't come to investigate.

But that was good—better, even, and made it so she didn't have to add any extra causalities to her evening.

After ten minutes had passed—confirmed by the clock on the wall—with no sign of Chloé appearing, Marinette got fed up.

The pained noises that escaped him as she pulled her blade from his chest didn't bother her, not any more. The screams were muffled, but she could see the tears coming from his eyes, the redness of his face as he tried to struggle, and the string of the bandalore was pulling so tightly on the skin that it was discoloured.

But all of that, even hearing him choke back a sob as the wound in his chest healed over before her very eyes, didn't make her feel anything.

He would've done that to her without a second glance.

And with the order of the world, wasn't it only right that she protected herself before it could happen?

She kneeled down, putting a hand on his chest, spreading out her fingers and and inspected his shirt, trying to determine where his hearts would be. Sometimes, they varied a few centimetres, but that was crucial when the others would regenerate within less than a minute, allowing them to recover and try again.

It took her three stabs.

There was no resistance to the blade, no struggle to make her use her strength to reach inside him, and there was no confirmation that she'd actually hit a heart, not until all of them were impaled within a short amount of time.

It was the hardest thing about it.

And when he sucked in a harsh breath, it was a matter of seconds before all that remained was ash on the floor. It was everything that he had been; his body, clothing, and even the tea-towel that she'd shoved into his mouth.

All of it had dwindled down into a tiny pile of ash.

Sadly, that didn't include the blood that had escaped him.

It had gotten onto her shirt.

Retrieving her bandalore, she placed it into her pocket before taking the blade over to the sink, washing it with more soap than necessary, watching as the bubbles built up.

It felt nice on her hands.

And after a moment of consideration, she stood on her toes, pulling her shirt out and wetting it underneath the tap before scrubbing soap into it, trying to get off some of the splatters of blood. There was still a day left of school, and she didn't want to draw attention to herself by missing it.

Fu wouldn't be pleased with that.

It was when she'd gotten some out—resulting in ugly splotches of colour on the previously white shirt—that there was a bang on the front door. But following the first came a rapid series of knocks, ones that Marinette recognised.

She slipped her blade back into the holster.

As soon as she unlocked the door, Chloé came stumbling through, running into the living room with familiarity, coming to a stop with a frustrated noise.

"I told you I was running late!" Chloé accused, whirling around and pointing a finger at her. "This—you're such a dick, do you know what?"

There wasn't much heat to her words; if Chloé truly hated her, she probably wouldn't have been standing there.

She put her hands into the pockets of her jacket. "I forgot my phone."

"You—" Chloé breathed out audibly, anger clear in her tense posture. "Are you fucking serious?"

Marinette just looked at her. "You weren't here in time."

"And the time before, according to you!" Chloé shot out, taking her frustration out by kicking the nearby armchair. "This isn't why you're here!"

The cushion split open, and one of the legs broke, causing it to topple to the side, looking tarnished and destroyed.

Blood had gotten onto that, too.

"Let's not forget," Marinette started, choosing her words carefully. "I'm not working for _you_. I'm here because it benefits me."

Chloé's nails were digging into her palms. "Fuck you."

"Good luck with your alibi," she said, not entirely sincerely. "I'm leaving."

And as she took deliberate steps towards the window, she didn't have to turn around to know that the crash she heard was Chloé destroying something else.

"Bye," Marinette uttered, not waiting for a response as she took her bandalore back out.

It was starting to spit outside, but her backpack wasn't completely ruined. With a press of a button, she saw the multiple messages that she'd gotten from Chloé, demanding her to wait—never asking, never being polite—but she didn't feel any guilt from it.

Maybe if Chloé had offered her money, she would've cared more about fulfilling that end of the bargain.

But as it was, it still benefited the both of them for another demon to die.

Fu didn't ask her about her new cuts.

-x-

There was always whispering.

It was bound to happen. Marinette kept herself separate from her class-mates; if she was forced to work in a group, she barely spoke, had her headphones on when she could, and did the bare minimum for making friends.

She didn't have any.

Keeping up with her schoolwork was only so the teachers wouldn't pay her any further attention. It would've been counterproductive for them to worry about her, so coming across as shy and awkward was the best plan.

She didn't pay the whispers any mind.

Marinette kept her hands in her pockets, eyes closed as she leaned back against the wall behind her, headphones playing soft music. Lunches were spent with her almost dozing off on a free bench after eating, or in the library to get a head start on homework.

The school was one of the safest places.

Sometimes, she walked around to stretch her legs, eyes wandering to specific class-mates, but she never intentionally interacted with them.

It was a good system.

After the last bell rang, Marinette slipped her jacket back on, pulling the hood up after putting on her headphones once more, lagging behind the other students. She dawdled, even reaching down to retie her shoes—despite them not being loose—before she followed after the others that were last to leave.

She kept her footsteps quiet.

It was a group of three that had been grouped together ever since she'd transferred the previous year. Two boys who were often caught whispering in the corner, and a girl that was dating one, unashamed that she preferred to spend time with them over their other class-mates.

The trio weren't always the loudest in class, but some teachers were careful not to pair them together, wanting the room to be quieter.

Marinette changed the song on her phone when the girl parted ways, waving back at the two others with a lot more energy than she'd shown throughout all their classes.

Marinette continued following them.

The boy with the glasses was the one to turn off next, the two of them pausing on the corner to chat.

She slowed her footsteps.

Then, it was just the one remaining; with his backpack lopsided, one strap longer than the other, and his hair sticking up at the back where he surely hadn't brushed it. He had scribbles of pen on his hand, from where he'd been doodling instead of doing his work, and a smudge of dirt on his elbows from leaning on the grass during lunch.

When he reached the fence outside his home, instead of going through the gate, he jumped over. The fence was only knee-high, but it was the grin he had on his face as he walked into his home that showed that he enjoyed doing childish things like that still.

She didn't stop outside.

Marinette wandered around the surrounding streets for a while, music playing through her headphones as she looked to see whether any of the homes had changed, and when there was no signs of disturbance, she adjusted her hands in her pockets, choosing to walk towards the nearest convenience store.

There wasn't much to the routine.

Sometimes, she stayed until the light in his bedroom went out, but that was rare. Marinette didn't stick around for long usually—especially not when it was light from the summer weather—but winter had allowed her a lot of cover. It had gotten dark quickly, though the temperature wasn't ideal for staying out too long.

Marinette had splurged on some comfortable gloves and a scarf that she could wrap around her neck multiples times, making sure that it wouldn't fall off.

Winter was set to come to a close soon.

When she walked back the other way, the light in his bedroom was still on. And if he stuck to his schedule, it still would be for a couple of hours, usually a bit longer on the first day of the week since he wasn't too tired.

She'd been doing it for almost a year, but no one had ever questioned her about it.

That was until the next day, at least.

The girl of the group was a boisterous one when she wanted to be. And because the teacher separated her from her friends with the use of a designated seating chart, Marinette had been sitting next to her for the past few months.

They didn't talk much.

Alya, with her red-coloured hair, was usually content to work in silence, occasionally scribbling on the desk and tapping her pen against her paper. She didn't feel the need to awkwardly try and make conversation with her, not after Marinette had shown such disinterest on their first day paired together. It wasn't the worst match-up she had.

Alya slid into the chair beside her—with enough force to scrape against the floor—and asked, "Where do you live?"

Marinette turned to look at her blankly.

"Well?" Alya questioned, not taking the silence for an answer. "Because I've wondered it for a while."

She frowned. "It's not any of your business."

Alya rolled her eyes.

They didn't talk after that.

It didn't escape her that there were questions about her. Some did try and make conversation with her when they were seated near each other, but Marinette preferred to keep herself separate—detached, even.

It was easier that way.

She didn't understand them.

From their boasting of what they'd gotten from their parents, which foreign place they were going on holiday, or what they'd done over the weekend—it was all things Marinette hadn't really experienced.

When she first joined the school, she'd been too awkward to try and connect with them, and after a year of being class-mates with everyone, it was still much the same.

She wasn't sad about it.

Fu told her that it was because of her upbringing.

She hadn't told him much about that.

Although Alya had questioned her, it didn't stop Marinette from walking the familiar way in the opposite direction of where she actually lived. She had her headphones on, hands tucked into her pockets, and when Alya did turn her head to look over her shoulder at her, Marinette didn't avert her gaze.

She was sure that Alya and her friends were laughing.

It didn't hurt.

Alya turned off to her road first.

Then, the male with the glasses, Nino, went next.

It was starting to rain outside.

Her remaining class-mate hurried up his stride, and since he didn't have an umbrella and his coat lacked a hood, he got damp from the rain in a matter of minutes, even though it was only fine. He walked quickly but didn't run, not concerned with getting sick.

He was only paying attention to where he was going, navigating the familiar streets with ease, his normal routine not interrupted at all.

Adrien had a lot of habits.

At a crossing, he waited patiently, arms crossed for a bit of warmth, and he beamed and raised a hand in a silent sign of thanks when a car stopped to let him pass.

She wasn't sure whether paranoid was the right word to describe her.

The car indicated that it going down the same street as him, driving below the speed limit when it started to move. It was only when it made another turning after Adrien that she considered her options.

It could've been a normal driver that was being cautious because of the weather—or, perhaps, they weren't too familiar with the area, but it was clear that they were being slow by the two other cars that were ambling behind them.

Another turn from Adrien meant that the car turned again, that time onto an emptier road.

The other cars didn't follow.

She didn't have to run to keep up with it.

And wasn't that _odd_?

Her instincts were what she trusted; not the police, not the lessons of safety that were half-heartedly taught in the school, and not the stale advice that was given about telling an adult if she happened to see something that was suspicious.

She slipped her headphones down to her neck.

Ahead of her, Adrien was making a dash to his house, hopping over his fence without the worry that he'd slip from the water, before running up to his front door.

The car stopped two houses down from his.

It wasn't one that was usually in the street, and the driver wasn't a neighbour that she'd seen in passing. And while she knew that no houses had been put up for sale, there was still a chance that it was someone coming to visit their friend.

That was a small hope.

Then, as she walked close enough to see their face, she saw them looking at his home.

When had she been wrong?

Marinette took one of her gloves off, leaving it in her pocket.

Then, she raised her hand to knock on their window.

It was a woman in her mid-thirties by appearance, visibly startled from the sudden noise.

Marinette flashed her a polite smile, hand falling down to rest on her skirt.

The woman scrutinised her.

But there wasn't anything intimidating about Marinette, not really; she was dressed in a neat school uniform with an oversized jacket on top, her hair styled in a respectable way that didn't draw her any extra attention.

She reached under her skirt.

The car door opened.

And in that instant, Marinette thrust the blade into the woman's chest, the choked out gasp smothered by the heavy rain falling around them. She barely had time to feel the woman's shirt on her knuckles before it faded to ash, falling down onto the damp ground and crumpling.

The blood was slick on her hands.

She leaned forward, reaching into the passenger side, picking up the bag that had been thrown onto the floor.

She closed the car door on her way out.

Marinette's socks were wet.

She threw them in with the rest of her clothing into the washing machine, hoping the best for the splatters of blood that had gotten onto her jacket.

It was only with Chloé that she came across the high-level ones.

Marinette took the money out of the purse, checking for any gift cards or other useful item that she could use. Then, the wallet was thrown into her bin.

There was a thrill at times when she managed to one-up a demon, but for the most part, they were too preoccupied with blending into normal lives to realise that she was a threat at all. After all, she was just a teenager that wandered around in her uniform—what was there to be suspicious about?

Apparently, Alya didn't stick to that thought.

Alya continued to try and talk to her.

It got to the point that the teacher had to call her out, asking her to be quiet, while Marinette kept her head down and focused on anything but socialising with her desk-mate for that lesson.

There was a plan to stick to.

She didn't dedicate years of her life just to squander and throw it away for one moment of someone trying to relate to her—because that's all it really was in the end wasn't it?

From Alya remarking on her shoes, on what jacket she was wearing, or even her hairstyle; the compliments were thrown out daily, no sincerity in them at all.

It was when Alya commented that she had nice handwriting that Marinette tightened the grip on her pen.

She asked, "What do you want?"

"Oh, you're talking now," Alya said, sounding surprised. "I was wondering how long I'd have to lick your ass for you to actually acknowledge me."

It was such a petulant response.

She breathed out slowly. "Why are you talking to me?"

"Because you're weird as hell," Alya bluntly replied. "And I want to know if any of the rumours are true."

As appealing as it was to leave, she didn't want to get detention.

She frowned. "Why?"

"Why not?" Alya countered, leaning back on her chair, looking far too comfortable for the cheap furniture. "You're stuck with me for, like, the rest of the year, so I'll weasel it out of you eventually."

Stabbing wasn't the way to solve all of her problems.

"I'll answer one a day, if you leave me alone for the rest of the lesson," Marinette offered.

Alya sat up properly, grinning. "Deal."

Marinette went back to doodling on her paper, and to her relief, Alya didn't try to talk strike up a conversation with her again that day.

It didn't stop Alya from waving at her when she turned off onto her street on the way home, though.

Marinette felt too awkward to do anything in return.

For all the experience she had with people, Marinette was good at blending in. It was what she'd tried to do for most of her life; to avoid negative attention, keep to herself, and she wasn't going to let a nosy class-mate ruin that for her.

Alya first question was, "Do you smoke?"

Marinette bluntly denied that.

It was during lunch that her routine changed.

Marinette had gotten her lunch out of her bag, sat on a bench with her scarf wrapped tightly around her neck, and she had her headphones on as she slowly ate.

Most of the students stayed inside the dining hall—until they were kicked out to make more room for the other students, ones that still needed to eat—and it was only when it was summer that she had a problem trying to find somewhere to sit.

When someone plopped down beside her, she was sure the confusion was clear on her face as she looked up to see Alya sitting there, entirely too smug for the situation.

And, of course, where Alya went, the rest of her little group of friends appeared.

Marinette didn't look at them.

It was enough to see the two extra sets of shoes.

Reaching up, she pulled her headphones down. "What are you doing?"

"Eating lunch," Alya stated, gesturing towards the food in her hand. "What about you?"

Her stomach felt tight.

"Babe," Nino spoke up, shuffling his feet awkwardly as he took a step forward. "Like, really. What are you doing?"

Her appetite was lost, but her lunch was still sitting in the container on her lap, forgotten.

"Marinette's my pal," Alya proclaimed, scooting on the bench until their thighs almost touched. "It's normal for friends to eat lunch together, right?"

"But—" Adrien started before cutting himself off with a forced laughed. And although she didn't look at him, she could imagine his expression. "You kind of look like you're bothering her?"

Marinette swallowed.

"You're clearly wrong," Alya replied. As she turned towards Marinette, she gestured to the two beside her with her hand. "So, as I'm sure you know, this idiot is Adrien, and the other one's Nino. You've ignored them as much as me the past year."

Nino tried to say, "Alya—"

But Alya cut him off with a disapproving noise. "Come on, sit down."

"There's no room on the bench," Adrien pointed out. He gestured to one beside them that wasn't under the protection of a tree, far too wet to sit on. "I'd rather stand, thanks."

With a shrug, Alya responded with, "Your choice."

There was a moment of silence.

It was just—it was something that shouldn't have happened.

As much as Marinette wanted to keep herself separate from Adrien, to keep from triggering any memories for him—if she was even memorable in the first place—to have him standing in front of her, even _looking_ at her in more than passing, was more than she'd had in years.

It felt surreal.

"You don't have to sit here," Marinette said, wrapping the cling film back over her remaining food. "I'm fine."

Alya decided to ask, "Do you hate everyone here or what?"

"No," she replied, honest. "I'm just not interested in making friends."

"That's cool," Nino remarked. "Be a loner and all that. Bit weird, but hey, whatever makes you happy."

"What he means to say," Alya interrupted, shooting her boyfriend a pointed look, "is that if you ever want to hang out, it's fine."

It was out of pity, wasn't it?

She picked up her bag with one hand. "No, thanks."

There was a call of her name as she walked away, but she didn't look back.

She kept on walking.

-x-

Chloé was irritable.

"This tastes like shit," Chloé stated, still taking a large sip of her drink. "Like, seriously. This coffee is the fucking worst I've ever had."

Tucking her legs underneath her as she leaned back in her seat, Marinette replied, "Shut up and drink it. I'm not buying you another."

"Stingy," Chloé accused. "It's not like you're broke."

"Yeah? Neither are you."

"This is supposed to be a thank you coffee," Chloé responded, scowling down at her drink as she placed it back in the saucer. "Instead, I think you bought this out of spite. You did this on purpose, didn't you?"

Her smile showed her teeth. "What? Brought you to the worst reviewed café in the area?"

Chloé scowled. "_Yes_."

"I'd never," Marinette lied. "I value you far too much for that."

"Yeah, right." Chloé snorted. "You're fucking delusional if you think I'd ever believe that."

It wasn't that they disliked each other; rather, Marinette liked to think that Chloé was the closest that she had to a friend.

And wasn't that a sad thought?

"Want to get to your point?" Marinette asked.

With a sigh, Chloé pushed her drink away. "So, I got stabbed yesterday."

She frowned. "And?"

"_And_," Chloé started, clearly unhappy with her lack of sympathy. "You want to know _why_? Because they wanted to know if I killed Simon."

Marinette looked at her blankly.

"The asshole you stabbed last week, Marinette."

"Oh," she said, monotone. "But I thought you had an alibi for that?"

"Yes, for when he died," Chloé responded slowly. "But they didn't realise he was actually dead until he stopped responding to everyone the other day, and they turned up at his home to find nothing."

She replied, "I still don't see how this leads to you being stabbed."

"I'm, like, this close," Chloé said, holding out her hand and showing a tiny space between her thumb and index finger, "from gaining another heart, and if I'd been there, it would've happened."

She stared. "And they know this—why?"

"I might've pissed someone off," was the nonchalant reply. "You being a dick actually stopped me from dying, so thanks."

With a sip of her own carbonated drink, she asked, "Simon not back already?"

"Yeah, but he's fucking sulking," Chloé confirmed. "Doesn't remember it, of course."

That didn't even need to be asked any more.

With a smile, Marinette offered, "Want me to get him again?"

"Oh, fuck yeah," Chloé agreed. "But he's staying with someone for a while, so he's not an easy target."

"That's the last time I'm even going to offer that, you know," she replied.

"It would make things annoying for me if you ended up failing," Chloé announced, pushing her hair up into a high ponytail, using the obnoxious hairband that had been on her wrist. "I'd rather keep you around to do my bidding, thank you."

She laughed. "Bidding, eh?"

"Let's be honest here," Chloé said haughtily. "There's clearly a dog and owner relationship between the two of us."

Amused, she just replied, "Yeah, I'm sure."

Chloé scowled at her.

Marinette grinned right back.

"You're the worst," Chloé accused.

"Maybe," she replied. "Anyone piss you off today, then? Or are you going to name someone unrelated so the suspicion doesn't fall to you any more?"

Chloé sniffed. "The latter."

"Go on, then," she prompted, tapping her nails against the table. "I might be able to squeeze it in this weekend."

And when Chloé smiled, it didn't reach her eyes. "Sure you're not my bitch?"

"You're swearing too much for your age," Marinette chastised, not at all offended. "I hope someone tells you off for that someday."

"I'd love to see them try," Chloé gloated.

And when she left, it was with a name typed into her phone along with the basic information that she needed. Chloé didn't hug her good-bye, didn't wish her a nice weekend, and definitely didn't thank her for the coffee—but there was still a smile on Marinette's face when she walked away.

It wasn't entirely unpleasant.

Fu didn't share that feeling.

"Hello, Marinette," he greeted as she walked through the front door, shoes still on as she approached the stairs.

Stopping to talk to him wasn't her go-to activity to do when she just got home. "Hi."

However, he had others ideas. "Where were you today?"

"I didn't kill anyone, if that's what you're asking," she bluntly replied, holding onto the banister as she leaned over to be able to see him. "I was on my best behaviour."

His smile didn't quite reach his eyes. "Were you?"

"Nothing happened," Marinette insisted. "It's fine. I just—I was hanging out with a friend for a while."

"A friend," he repeated, dubious. "Are you sure that's wise?"

It was something she had to ask herself at times. "For now, yes," she answered. "I'm making use of my connections. Isn't that what you wanted me to do?"

"Not like this," Fu responded. "You're too... I worry about you, Marinette."

She walked up the stairs, shutting down the conversation.

It wasn't something she wanted to get into.

As soon as she was in her bedroom, she locked the door behind her. For as giving as Fu had been to allow her to stay with him—which had taken a while for her to even agree to, let alone feel comfortable to actually do—it didn't mean that she trusted him fully.

Fu was a good man, but he was selfish.

But wasn't everyone?

Everything that she did was selfish, for her own gain.

That was one of the reasons that Alya's sudden interest in her confused her so.

When school started the following week, Alya sat down beside with a wide smile and outright asked, "Do you want to walk home with us?"

Marinette didn't know how to respond to that.

"You go our way, right?" Alya clarified, tossing her needed stuff from her backpack onto the desk, almost causing them to fall off the other side from her carelessness. "I see you, like, everyday."

She replied quietly, "No, thanks."

"You're really not good at socialising, are you?" Alya mused. "I can't tell whether you're brooding or if you really don't know how to make friends. I'm actually being genuine here, you know."

That didn't make her feel any better. "Why?"

Alya shrugged. "Why not?"

"It's... weird," Marinette slowly said. "You didn't care before."

"Maybe I did," Alya shot back. "And I've only just got the confidence to talk to you."

She was sure she didn't look convinced.

"I'm not trying to pressure or or some shit—"

The teacher called on Alya then, promptly telling her off for swearing and not paying attention to the class. She was also given detention during lunch that day, which meant that Marinette was able to eat her lunch alone and listen to music without being worried that Alya would drag her friends over to her again.

And when she trailed after the group, headphones on and busy with picking a new song, Marinette did look up to see Alya standing there with her arms crossed.

Marinette's response was to stop walking.

Then, Adrien took a step forwards his friend, pulling her back so they'd start walking, their lips moving with a conversation that she didn't care to hear.

What was it that had even drawn attention to her?

Marinette had been walking the same way as them for the past year, ever since she'd transferred, and Alya hadn't cared about that in the slightest. She'd even sat beside Nino in a class and hadn't had many conversations with him—other than their experiments they had to do together—and she certainly hadn't spoken to Adrien since she'd appeared.

And yet, Alya had decided to ruin all of that.

And for what?_ Curiosity_?

She was frustrated.

-x-

While demons were essentially not humans—they had abilities and were so much more powerful than the average person—there was an understanding between a lot of them that they wanted to blend into the rest of society.

Fu had told her it was because Hell had fallen to ruins, but she didn't have any facts to back that up. It still sounded as insane as when she'd first heard it, but having to stab someone's chest multiple times to try and find hearts that weren't even _visible _to her did have a way of making her desensitised.

Maybe they didn't want to take over Earth, too.

All of the knowledge Fu had taught her over the years was taken with a grain of salt. She'd wanted to confirm it for herself before believing everything, but there was some things that she couldn't find out easily.

Chloé was a good source of information.

"Angel sighting last week," Chloé confirmed, tossing an apple into the air before catching it with ease. "It was in the news. That explosion in the shopping centre?"

She frowned. "They covered it up?"

"Well, _we_ did," was the confirmation she got. "The fucking angel ran away with his tail between his legs before he'd die."

"Shame," she muttered.

"Right?" Chloé agreed, taking a bite from her apple. Then, as she licked her lips, she remarked, "They killed a kid, though. A baby."

She questioned, "The angel?"

"Yeah," Chloé clarified. "Beat us to it, I guess. Wasn't on anyone's radar yet."

Marinette reached out and patted her shoulder. "Sorry you couldn't kill a baby."

Chloé pushed her hand off with more force than necessary. "I could always kill you."

"Oh, really?" She raised her eyebrows. "You'd never level up, then."

"For the last time, it's _not_ levelling up—"

Marinette interrupted her with, "Yeah, but it's pretty accurate, isn't it? Not like you can say it's completely wrong."

"I hate you," Chloé announced flatly.

"As you always tell me." She grinned, putting her hands into the pockets of her coat. "Isn't it your turn to buy food?"

Chloé stared at her pointedly as she took another bite.

"Cheap," she accused.

Chloé raised her middle finger.

It was the most natural interaction she had.

It wasn't forced, not really; Marinette didn't completely trust Chloé, but that didn't mean that she couldn't relax and not be on guard the whole time. After a few months of knowing her, she'd stopped wondering whether another demon would be watching, and that it had all been a set up.

For the most part, Chloé turned up looking similar to her in age. It seemed the easiest for her—what she preferred to wear, rather than dressed in smart-looking clothes—but there were times when that wasn't the case at all.

Phones weren't allowed out during lessons at school. It was a rule that if a device went off, a teacher would confiscate it, but during breaks, they were fine with them being out.

It was lunch when she finally got her phone out to see countless messages that she'd received from Chloé.

The last one proclaimed that she was coming to the school.

It felt like she'd been punched in the stomach.

It had been sent only a few minutes ago, and surely—_surely—_Chloé wasn't close enough to be there already.

Chloé wasn't going to listen to her, she knew that already.

It was because of that that Marinette wandered to the damp grass of the field behind the school, beyond the playground where others were sure to stay in when it was cold and miserable-looking, and it was with haste that she walked across, entering the wooded area that acted as a shortcut to the road outside.

There wasn't a gate to keep students out, but anyone that left was caught on the cameras around the school, so they couldn't get away with it.

And for the first time since she'd joined the school, she skipped her afternoon lessons.

There was a good twenty minutes until attendance was taken and a teacher would realise that she was missing, only causing more attention to her when others would say that she'd been there earlier—

Her socks were wet.

Chloé answered her phone on the fifth ring.

"Where are you?" Marinette asked, sure that her irritation was clear in her tone.

"Across the road," was the reply she got. "I have a clear view of your school's obnoxious gates out front."

"Follow it to the right," she instructed. "The road with all the trees. I'll meet you there."

When she emerged from the woods, shoes covered in mud and splatters up her legs, Chloé's scowling face wasn't what she wanted to see at all.

She had faint wrinkles around her eyes.

"Old," Marinette remarked.

Chloé raised her upper lip in disgust.

Along with the aged appearance—old enough to look in her late thirties—Chloé had on a tight outfit that was more appropriate for working in an office, topped off with a posh-looking coat that complimented her figure. The colour and length of her hair hadn't changed, since that was out of her control, but the body and face shifting was always strange to see.

She much preferred standing beside Chloé when she couldn't pass as her mother.

"Why are you even here?" she asked, pushing her hair away from her face. "You know this is suspicious as hell, right?"

Chloé frowned at her. "Did you even read my fucking messages?"

"Not all of them, no," she wasn't embarrassed to admit.

"If you actually read them," Chloé started, talking to her as though she were a child. "You'd know that Simon died again."

It was underwhelming.

But that time, Marinette recognised the name. "Is that all?"

"It wasn't by one of us," Chloé said.

It should've been weird that Chloé referred to demons as that while with her—not bothering to separate the two of them—but it wasn't, not any more.

She held her hands up in a sign of surrender. "Not me."

"Yeah, I fucking know that," Chloé ground out. "But what I'm saying is, it's not—just don't go out tonight, all right?"

Putting a hand over her heart, she teased, "Oh, are you caring about me now?"

"Another angel came," Chloé retorted, nothing but distaste clear in her expression. "Killed Simon two nights before, then someone else yesterday."

Marinette tactfully replied, "I don't see how this is any of my concern."

"They're killing humans, too." There was nothing in her body language, nor even the tone of her voice, that implied that Chloé actually cared about what she was saying. "Didn't care about the causalities. As much as it pains me to say, it would suck if you got caught up in it."

She breathed out loudly. "I've never caught their attention before, why would I now?"

"Hell if I know," Chloé replied to that. "Try not to be a fucking idiot and get yourself killed, yeah? I don't give a shit what else you do."

"Clearly not," she remarked. "That's why you came all the way out here."

Chloé glowered at her. "Not like you ever read my messages, right?"

It was almost touching that Chloé had came to warn her.

Putting her hands into her pockets, Marinette asked, "Anything else?"

There was a beat of silence where they only looked at each other. It was still unnerving to see Chloé with wrinkles on her face.

Then, Chloé reached into the pocket of her coat to bring out a folded piece of paper.

Marinette held her hand out, waiting for her to give her it.

It wasn't what she'd expected.

The top of the page was adorned with large colourful writing, that had clearly taken more than a few minutes, and the actual text at the top made her laugh.

"It really is a hit list, eh?"

Chloé didn't look embarrassed in the slightest.

The list was complete with names, addresses, and a rough idea of their schedules from their jobs. There were one or two on the list that were unemployed, not interested in playing the role of a human. Those ones were quite rare to find.

Chloé did something in life, even if she wouldn't tell her.

The office-looking outfit was a clue, though.

As she pocketed the paper, Marinette warned her, "Don't come to my school again."

"Or what?" Chloé asked snottily.

They were on the side of a road, one surrounded by trees and no shops within sight, which meant that there weren't any cameras to look at them.

She doubted anyone would pay enough attention to them to stop.

It was because of that that she took a step towards Chloé.

"Or you'll be suspected of being a pedophile if you're caught?" Marinette suggested. She let a hand fall down to her side and continued to say, "I didn't tell you where I attended for you to turn up on a whim. It was to keep you _away_."

Chloé rolled her eyes. "I'm not going to slaughter your class-mates."

Except—except that wasn't entirely true.

She couldn't risk it.

"If I see you here again, I will stab you," she honestly told her. "I won't kill you, but I might just leave my knife in you long enough for it to be uncomfortable."

Chloé scoffed.

With practised ease, she got the blade out of the sheath beneath her skirt, turning it around in a smooth movement so the end was pressing lightly against Chloé's neck. "I'm not your lackey, remember?"

Chloé's smile was all teeth. "Are you flirting with me, Marinette?"

"That depends," she started. "How about you keep it in appropriate places and I'll say yes?"

It was Chloé that leaned forward, making it so the blade was pressing into her skin enough to cause a slit.

"You're lucky you're cute," was the response she got to that, complete with Chloé reaching out and cupping her cheek in a way that was anything but affectionate. "I could crush you in my hands, you know?"

The blood that appeared didn't last long before it healed before her eyes.

Marinette's grin wasn't sincere. "Who's flirting now?"

Chloé winked at her, dropping her hand down to her side, taking a step back before walking in the opposite direction without so much as a good-bye.

Her heart was beating fast.

They weren't friends, that was something that she was very aware of.

Marinette wiped the blood off on her jacket.

-x-

Alya had lessened in her advances of being her friend.

It had finally become clear that having Adrien and Nino along with her caused Marinette to respond even less than usual, which meant that Alya stuck to talking to her in class.

It almost meant that when their seating plans changed for another, Alya willingly took the seat beside her, leaving Adrien and Nino to pair up together without any hassle between them choosing who had to go with someone else.

Marinette still didn't fully understand what was going on, but Alya had caught on and had gotten less annoying when a teacher was trying to talk. While she sometimes dazed off and didn't pay attention, Marinette liked to take notes when she could and keep ahead of the class.

After a month of sitting together, it seemed that that had rubbed off on Alya.

"I've been copying your notes," Alya admitted, not at all embarrassed. "They're so damn helpful, for real. I haven't had my grade this high for this class since, like, my first year."

It didn't sound very sarcastic when she replied, "Good for you."

Alya grinned at her.

She supposed that Alya being her desk-mate wasn't so awful any more.

"What are you bad at?" Alya questioned, elbow on the table, resting her head in her hand. "For lessons, I mean. I don't think I've ever seen you struggle with stuff."

While Marinette wasn't failing anything, that didn't mean that she was breezing through them all.

"Art," she said.

That made Alya laugh. "Really?"

Marinette shrugged.

They went back to working.

"We're going to the cinema later," Alya announced without any prompting. "Do you want to come with us?"

There was a part of her that was starting to believe that the offers were genuine, but she wasn't interested in them. While Alya had managed to worm her way into her everyday life, Adrien and Nino were very much detached.

It was going to stay that way.

"No," she denied.

Alya didn't put up a fight to that.

It was nice to have that little bit of information for the end of the day. The group of three went off in a different direction as usual, a skip in their steps, and Marinette kept to her routine and walked the other way, not following them at all.

She stopped off at a café to get a hot drink, holding it in her hands as she leaned back against the seat in a booth, contemplating whether to start on her homework already.

She didn't want to go home just yet.

It wasn't that she didn't consider it a home—it was, in a sense. The bedroom was all hers, she had a bathroom that Fu never touched, and she had even been given a key to the front door, but it never felt all that warm and welcoming. For as welcoming and happy as Fu was for her to stay with him, there wasn't much of a connection between them.

Fu was—he was complicated.

He wasn't Aloys, and he certainly wasn't trying to be.

She finished most of the homework that was set that day, right up until the employees were starting to clean the café. They weren't outright telling her to leave, but from the lack of customers that were inside, the message was clear.

She packed her things away.

And when she walked out onto the street, one hand in her pocket, she had her phone in the other. With the internet still connected to the café, she logged onto social media to check the few account names that she knew from the top of her head.

Alya's profile told her that the film had already finished from the picture she'd posted of the three of them close to twenty minutes ago.

Adrien and Nino hadn't posted anything, but they'd liked Alya's picture.

It was the little things that she was grateful for.

While cameras were a hassle—for if she was caught stabbing a demon and then they'd turned to dust, it would've caused more trouble than not—the advances in technology weren't always bad. With the surge of social media and most posting to their accounts, it meant that she could check in on someone without actually talking to them.

And that was good, as she didn't have any intention of talking to him at all.

Technology was just—there weren't many words to describe how helpful it was for what she was doing. Fu had been sort of up-to-date, but when he'd insisted that she'd need a phone to help her, he hadn't been able to explain it all.

There was a video online for almost everything.

The internet was how she'd found out new titbits about Adrien; from his favourite films, who he hung out with the most, and how well his cat had grown up over the years.

She didn't know how to feel the first time she'd seen a picture.

Some things that were possible with apps from the store were a little intrusive.

The sign on the door behind her flipped over to show the café was closed, but Marinette was still standing there, back against the glass as she reloaded the page.

She had cash in her wallet if she needed to buy more data, but she was going to leech as much internet connection as she could.

There was little doubt that Adrien hadn't walked home. His parents only allowed him to walk home in the afternoon, dropped him off in the morning, and were bound to pick him up from spending time with friends.

She'd overheard him complain about that a few times.

It had started to get dark by the time she'd walked onto the end of his street. Her phone was in her pocket, hands in there, too, to try and keep warm, and she was thankful that it hadn't started to rain again.

His light wasn't on.

Which was odd when there were two cars in the driveway.

It wasn't that strange for her to know that, was it?

If his mother was home, he would spend time with her downstairs, but with his rocky relationship with his father—that wasn't a secret, not when she'd heard him heatedly rant to Alya about it while being two rows in front of her—he preferred to spend his time in his room.

That wasn't even the weirdest thing she'd found out about him.

Marinette hovered for a bit, standing outside another neighbour's fence, bringing out her phone and loading up his social media pages again.

None of them were updated.

Which wasn't entirely unusual, but he did like to post about his opinions after going to the cinema.

Nino had gone home and posted a picture of his home already.

She knew that it wasn't right.

The year before, when she'd asked to be excused to go to the bathroom while everyone else was playing basketball, Marinette had taken a chance that would've had her serving detention for far too long if she'd gotten caught.

It was only when Adrien went out that she used it.

The application loaded slowly.

She used her fingers to zoom out on the map, trying to see whether she recognised any of the surrounding areas, and her eyebrows knitted together in confusion as she took note of his location.

It was on the other side of the city.

Looking to the side confirmed that his parents' vehicles were still in the drive.

There could've been a chance that a car had broken down, or that Adrien had gone to join a friend for dinner—

It wasn't anywhere near the cinema.

But when it came to Adrien, she preferred to know that he was safe, rather than leaving it on a questionable note.

He deserved nice things.

And since it wasn't dark enough to actually get away with swinging across the city without drawing too much attention to herself—not when she needed to stick to a populated area—Marinette took a bus.

His location hadn't changed the whole time there.

She reloaded the application twice, just to make sure that it was working.

It was.

Of all the things she'd expected, she never thought that she'd walk onto a nice-looking street with quaint houses. The one that was the most interest to her was the one with the well-tended to garden out front, along with a birdhouse in the tree on the front lawn.

Her phone confirmed that it was the right address.

She swapped the device for her bandalore in her hand, the comfort of the loop around the finger hidden within her pocket as she strode across the paved walkway to the porch.

The light flickered on.

Motion-sensitive.

The doorbell was loud, the volume high enough for her to hear the tune playing inside from the front door.

Her stomach felt tight.

The seconds seemed to be passing too slowly, the anxiety of seeing who'd answer the door causing her heart to pound loudly, able to be heard within her head, and it was as she let out the breath she'd been holding that there was any indication that someone was coming.

They unlocked the door.

There was no creak as it opened, no ominous sound whatsoever, and she was greeted by the wrinkled face of an old woman smiling at her politely.

"Hello," the woman greeted her, a weathered hand coming up to hold onto the door. "What can I do for you?"

Adrien didn't have any grandparents left.

It was an old woman, someone that looked like a strong wind would knock them over, but she—

Marinette wanted to be sure.

With a flick of her hand, the string of the bandalore looped around the woman's body. With her legs bound and knocking her over in a blink of an eye, Marinette tugged her hand to the side, causing the body to hit the bannister of the staircase with a bit more force than she'd predicted.

She shut the door behind her as she entered the home.

The woman's consciousness and struggle to get free was all the confirmation she needed.

There wasn't much resistance as she sat on top of her bound waist, spreading her hand out to smooth out the material of the woman's shirt as she retrieved her sword. The woman did try and wriggle away, the movement of her shoulders meaning she was trying to use her strength to break what was holding her still—

But nothing had managed to damage her bandalore in the years it had been hers.

The blood was warm on Marinette's hands as she counted two hearts.

A low-level, then.

After coughing from accidentally inhaling some of the ash, Marinette got to her feet, blade still in her hand as she kept her bandalore in her other one, ready to see if anyone else would appear.

She'd never known a demon to have extra-sensitive hearing.

The living room was clear, but she still opened up each door, checking the closets and any area that she could. She didn't want to pause to check on her phone whether Adrien's phone was still saying he was here—

The old woman could've always been a pick-pocket.

But, then again, demons didn't tend to steal.

They were usually appearing to be respectable upstanding citizens, ones that didn't get up to no good, and that was the face that they showed most of the world.

Marinette really wondered why demons hadn't tried to take over the world.

Then again, for all she knew, that could've happened in the past. Perhaps that was the reason why they were on such odds with angels, and why there was always such chaos when the two were involved.

It sounded unbelievable.

The staircase creaked as she walked up it.

Out of the two bedrooms, it was the largest one that held what she was looking for.

Marinette had pushed the door open with her foot, careful not to use too much force and make a lot of noise, but the light flooded from the hallway into the room, illuminating and giving her a clear view of what she was seeing.

She jumped to the side, standing out of view of the door, hastily pulling up her hood.

Did it really matter at that point?

Adrien didn't appear to be injured, but she couldn't really tell when he was staring up at her in horror with wide eyes, tape covering his mouth, and his arms bound behind his back. His legs had been bound, too.

There wasn't any blood, though.

She couldn't say the same about her.

Marinette walked forward, kneeling down beside him as he tried to shuffle away.

She whispered, "I'll help you out of this, but you need to be quiet. There might still be someone in the house."

That got him to stop.

It was a bit concerning how quickly he trusted her there.

"Hold still," Marinette instructed.

To her surprise, when she cut the tape on his legs, he didn't try and do anything more than stretch them out, surely trying to get rid of the stiffness after being in the same position for so long.

"Careful," she advised. "I need you to lean forward a bit."

He complied.

The rope fell to the floor without any resistance. It wasn't any tougher than bone was with her sword—then again, everything needed the same amount of force with it.

Adrien scrambled to the side, fumbling for his pocket before he retrieved his phone, the added light coming from it highlighting his face as he frantically tapped at the screen.

Marinette took it from his shaking hands.

"Not a good idea," she whispered.

But rather than be on her face, his gaze was on the sword she was still holding; or, more specifically, the blood that was coating the sharp end.

His skin was pale, his hands were shaking, and she wouldn't have been surprised if he was close to vomiting. There wasn't much time to focus on that, not when the sound of the door opening floated through the house.

Marinette lurched forward, putting a hand over his mouth before he could react.

The sudden movement caused his phone to clatter to the floor.

The two of them turned to stare at it. She could feel the fast pants that were leaving him against her hand, his rapid breathing a sure sign that he was panicking, but there wasn't much she could do to calm him down.

And as she turned back to him, staring him in the eyes, she urged him quietly, "I need you to listen to me."

There wasn't much of a response from him.

Cautiously, she got to her feet, looking down on him to see whether he'd panic and try and run away. Adrien just put a hand to his chest, still breathing fast, and stared at her imploringly with wide eyes.

She hadn't expected much from him, but it was good enough.

"Hide," she advised.

He didn't stand up.

There was talking downstairs, but it was faint, not loud enough to make out the words. Marinette adjusted the grip on her blade, not wanting to put it away, and there wasn't much choice about what she'd do.

When there wasn't the element of surprise, she wasn't strong. The weapons were everything to her; without them, she was—

She was a human.

It was like any other time, wasn't it? The only difference was that the person she was protecting was actually there, in _person_, able to see the droplets of blood that had splattered onto her, the glint of her blade as she stepped into the light of the hallway, footsteps sounding so much heavier than they actually were.

She took in a steady breath.

They were still talking on the phone.

As she approached the stairs, taking her steps slowly, Marinette could understand a few words, enough to identify them as a male.

She could see the blood on the floor.

The man's voice was coming from the living room. The lights were all on downstairs as she slowly crept down the stairs, pausing with each movement to see whether she'd made too much noise.

The wood creaked.

Marinette froze.

The talking stopped.

There wasn't much of a choice, was there? For anyone that knew what really had happened there—to put together the blood and the small amount of ash that was on the floor—there was little chance that she'd be able to walk out of the house without further violence.

That wasn't even involving Adrien in the equation.

Adrien was good, he was _innocent—_

And for someone to snatch him, to restrain him so and answer the door as though nothing was out of the ordinary made her angrier than she could describe.

She could hear him as he walked.

Clearly, he didn't think that was important.

As the footsteps grew closer, Marinette threw the bandalore prematurely. It caused the string to loop around the end of the banister, to tug her forward with a momentum that was dangerous—but rather than panic about the miscalculation, her body collided with the man's knocking them both to the floor.

She regained her balance by stabbing her blade through the flesh of his shoulder, hard enough to pierce through, impaling the floor in the process.

And as she tugged the bandalore back into her hand, the man struggled, using his strength to tug his body free from the blade—the grotesque sound of his skin being _sliced—_before he used his uninjured arm to grasp her neck, choking her.

It shouldn't have—

Black spots appeared in her vision as she gasped for breath, sword no longer in her hand as she was raised up into the air, feet dangling from the ground as the man's grip tightened.

With each pained wheeze, she tried to concentrate on freeing herself—trying to kick her legs, hands clawing at the _one_ of his around her neck—but it seemed hopeless as the tightness in her chest grew.

It was her fingers getting tangled in the cord as she frantically scratched at his hand that enabled her to get free.

It didn't wrap around the banister that time.

Her hand barely moved, couldn't even commit to a real throw while she was wheezing, gasping for breath, but that didn't matter in the end.

Just a twitch of her index finger was enough to command the bandalore to loop around his legs from where it had been resting on the floor, pulling tight enough for him to lose his balance and let go of her in the process—

Marinette coughed, clutching at her throat as she tried to take deep breaths, jerkily moving her arm enough to cause the man to fall over again.

Her eyes were wet, vision hazy as her chest heaved, but it was enough for her to act when she had the upper-hand for a short period of time. She kicked him in the face for a moment to distract him, and made it so the hold she had was more secure; looped around his chest, keeping his arms to his side, legs unable to kick out at her.

Her throat hurt.

Marinette didn't ask questions.

She leaned down, plucking her sword from where it was still stuck in the floorboards, before looking the man in the eyes as she plunged it into his chest.

He didn't look familiar at all.

Prolonging his death would be counterproductive.

Unlike, the woman, he had three hearts.

It was when she thrust the sword into the last one, piercing the skin with ease, ribs not proving to be a problem in the slightest, that the floorboards creaked.

The body was reduced to ash, blood and proof of the struggle remaining, and her knees were wet from the warm liquid as she turned around, blade held in her hand, ready to react.

Adrien's horrified gaze met hers.

That wasn't—

That was never the _plan_.

Startled, she pointed the sword away from him—not putting it away—and stumbled up onto her feet, wincing a little from the pain.

Her throat felt like it was on fire.

But Adrien was standing there, seeming to be even paler than before, staring down in shock at the scene in front of him, clearly lost on how he was supposed to respond.

She didn't know how much he'd seen—or even if he'd happened to witness anything at all.

Marinette ran.

-x-

"Yeah, totally," Chloé confirmed, twirling her fork to get a large amount of food on it. "It only happens if you're both touching at the same time—which is total bullshit, okay? The amount of trust that's needed for that is fucking unheard of."

Intrigued, she asked, "That really works?"

"Apparently." Chloé shrugged. "Haven't really _seen_ it. No one's actually going to share a kill. However, I have seen enough assholes stealing kills."

Marinette wasn't sincere as she replied, "You poor thing."

"Fuck off," Chloé muttered before trying to fit all of the food on her fork inside of her mouth. "Aren't you supposed to be at school?"

"I'm sick," she retorted.

Chloé didn't look convinced.

There was no chance of her confessing her problems, or telling Chloé more than she needed to. She didn't trust her that much.

"Don't you have a job?" Marinette shot back.

The answer to that was, "Who knows?"

There was no mention of the two murdered from Chloé. Surely, two days was enough time for them to regenerate and tell their tale of what had happened—but not the specifics, not when their last hours were forgotten, sacrificed for being reborn as they were—but that didn't seem to be the case at all.

Adrien hadn't updated his social media.

But when she'd walked past his home later that night, after going into a store to get a drink for her burning throat, the light in his bedroom had been on.

The application confirmed that he was there, too.

She was glad that he'd gotten home.

She did check news sites, looking to see whether there was a story about a teenage boy being kidnapped and kept in a bedroom, but there wasn't anything of the sort popping up. And even if he _had_ contacted the police, all there was was blood on the floor, no sign of the owners of the home (if they even owned it at all).

They wouldn't turn up until a few days later, reborn again with less powers than before and their memory of that night missing.

But if they were investigated, if they were to be asked about Adrien and became intrigued about why they would've done such a thing—they'd discover him all over again, wouldn't they?

She should've stayed.

Instead of facing the problem, she'd ran away, even going as far as to avoid going into school.

It didn't help that the bruises on her throat weren't hidden by the school uniform, nor could she hide the slight limp when walking.

She bought make-up to put on her neck.

It wasn't her shade.

She turned up at the gates of the school at the same time as the majority of other students, blending in with the crowd as she walked up the steps, hand holding onto the strap of her backpack.

When she took her seat, it was with relief that Alya wasn't there yet. There was a few minutes left before class started, meaning class-mates would be running inside, trying to beat the teacher to avoid getting detention.

There was always the chance that Adrien wouldn't appear, and that if he did, he wouldn't recognise her—

When Adrien walked in the room, Alya by his side, his gaze wandered to her desk immediately. His reaction was clear on his expression, as he looked stricken and ill, and he paused in the doorway.

It felt slower than it actually was.

He didn't make it to his seat before turning his head and expelling the pitiful contents of his stomach.

Well, there went that option.

After he went to the nurse, proceeding to stay there for the first two lessons, there weren't any whispers about what had happened to him. Instead, class-mates were saying that he clearly wasn't recovered and probably should've taken another day off, but his father must've convinced him to go in.

Either he hadn't reported the incident or others just didn't know.

But there—no one came to _question_ her, not even after his response to looking at her. It seemed as though others hadn't figured out that it was because of her at all.

She was just a loner, after all. Why would any of them think she'd cause that reaction?

At lunch, Alya sat down beside her on the bench outside. "You're not going to throw up on me, are you?"

She stared at her blankly.

It was Nino, who happily took the seat beside his girlfriend, that asked, "You're not feeling... off, are you?"

There was no Adrien in sight, but the fact that Nino was conversing with her as though it was the most normal thing was confusing.

It was because of that that the only thing she could say was, "What?"

"You were sick, too," Alya reminded her. "You okay? Teachers were surprised that you were off at all."

"I'm fine," Marinette said.

Lunch was awkward.

It was mostly Alya and Nino talking to each other while eating, occasionally turning towards her and asking her opinion. Marinette gave non-committal answers most of the time, feeling entirely too awkward to do anything else.

And when they stood up when the bell went, Nino even smiled at her.

Marinette was bewildered.

Adrien hadn't gone home sick. When Alya and Nino were talking, they did say that his parents never came to pick him up from school early—they were too busy with work, so he tended to stay in the nurse's office until the end of the day, if he happened to fall ill.

He reappeared for the last two lessons.

He didn't look her way.

But she—Marinette didn't know what she'd expected. There had to be something that would come out of it, but his actions were hard to predict.

She had left him, alone, in a house with no corpses, but blood splattered across the floor and walls.

And he wasn't as desensitised to it as she was, was he?

When the final bell rang, signalling the end of the day, Adrien said to his friends, loud enough for her to hear, "You can go ahead first. I'm being picked up."

It took a little convincing for them to leave.

She could hear his footsteps as he came to stop by her desk where she was still slowly putting her belongings into her bag.

Marinette didn't look up, didn't want to see his expression.

"Are you—" Adrien started before cutting himself off. Then, he cleared his throat, stalling. "Are you going to explain?"

With a glance up, she confirmed that the teacher had walked out of the room, and the only other students were past the doorway. They wouldn't be ushered to leave immediately, and it was doubtful that anyone else would come in.

There wasn't any point in denying it, was there?

It was because of that that she outright asked, "Did you call the police?"

He hesitated before answering, "...No."

"Why?"

"I—" Adrien shuffled on the spot, body language screaming that he was uncomfortable, and it was only then that she looked up and met his gaze. "I didn't—"

He was pale again, the hand that he was running through his blond-coloured hair looking to be shaking.

It was better than him being dead, but it was hard to look at.

But what was she supposed to do? She couldn't invite him somewhere private, spill everything to him—Aloys had chosen to keep him in the dark, and she wanted to honour that about him. Fu had been the one to assume that she'd been chosen for the job of protecting Adrien—and, maybe, she had been, but she hadn't heard those words from Aloys himself—and since then, it had been her goal to keep him happy.

All the unhappiness that he was radiating was because of her.

Surely, telling him a little bit would—it would make things easier, right?

"I saved you," Marinette started, not looking away from his eyes. "What more do you need to know?"

"That—" Adrien's voice quivered. "That I'm not—I'm not crazy."

"You're not," she told him, but it did little to reassure him from the lack of change in his stance. "You're—everything that happened was real, okay?"

He swallowed. "How?"

"I can't give you a good answer there," she admitted. "It's just—it was something that shouldn't have happened, but it did."

Even she was aware of how poorly she'd worded that.

"_Shouldn't_ have happened?" Adrien questioned, his voice going higher-pitched than usual due to his emotions. And when he spoke, he waved a hand with his words. "That—I was literally kidnapped!"

"It won't happen again," Marinette retorted. "It won't."

His answer came out frantic. "You don't know that!"

Of all the things she could've said, she came out with, "I'm here to make sure it won't."

"What?" Adrien took a step back, wide-eyed. "I—what does that even _mean_? Are you kidding me right now? That isn't—that's not a comfort to hear at all!"

It was the most he'd spoken to her in years.

But back then, his voice had been soft and filled with happiness, the joy of him saying her name always showing that he loved being her friend, that he cherished that they'd talk on the phone, even after time apart from each other—

The paleness of his skin contrasted horribly with the dark circles under his eyes.

They were her fault, too, weren't they?

"I'm not here to hurt you," she whispered. "I didn't—I didn't before, did I?"

His eyes looked wet. "You left me there."

It was nothing short of an accusation.

"I..." Marinette trailed off, lost on how to articulate her feelings. "It was never—I didn't plan for that to happen. For you to—to find out, I mean."

"Find out _what_?" he asked, still looking as frantic as he sounded. "That you—that you can somehow stab people and make them—make them not there any more?"

He'd definitely seen from the top of the stairs, then.

It wasn't the best defence, but she blurted out, "They weren't people."

He stared at her incredulously.

"I can't explain this to you fully," Marinette answered uncertainly, not sure whether she was making the right choice. "But I—you need to know, I won't let anything happen to you."

"I need to go." He took a cautious step back. "I—I'm grounded, but this—I'm not letting this go so easily."

She never would've expected that of him. "Okay."

"I don't trust you," he stated, clutching at the strap of his backpack tightly. "I—_you're_—"

"That's fine," she interrupted, putting her own bag on her back, only for him to take another step away from her. "But I'm going to walk behind you to make sure you make it home."

He looked terrified at the thought of that.

It didn't hurt.

-x-

He kept turning to look at her.

That was to be expected—she had practically turned his life upside down, after all, but the fact that he'd turn away as soon as she met his gaze was a little grating after it had happened a few times the first day.

And if Alya wandered over to her, Adrien didn't join her.

It was worse than him ignoring her, somehow.

But it was fine—it _was_. She wasn't there to be his friend, to be someone for him to confide in. She'd spent the last year without him even realising that she was there, and it had worked wonderfully.

Until he'd gotten kidnapped, at least.

There wouldn't be a chance like that again.

If a demon happened to get a hand on him again, the possibility of them taking Adrien to a second location to share the kill with someone else was miniscule. Chloé had said that it was almost unheard of, and she doubted that such a rarity would happen again.

She'd never followed him when he'd gone out with friends before. It hadn't—it hadn't seemed that necessary. The application had been enough to confirm his location.

There had been a few that had stared at him for a while, and then had taken to driving their car alongside him, or changing directions to walk behind him, never quite approaching in the middle of the day. They were crafty, preferred to do it when no one would see them and question what exactly had happened, and leaving Adrien's mangled corpse in a crowd wasn't the best way for them to savour the sudden boost in power that his death would grant them.

She'd just been lucky.

And so, when he was walking home after Nino had turned onto his own street, Marinette didn't have a visible reaction to Adrien looking over his shoulder at her with a displeased expression.

It was for his own good.

Because the rule had always been to keep Adrien out of it, hadn't it?

She wondered whether Aloys had known about him.

There was one way to make Adrien trust her, hopefully.

She put her treasured belongings in her backpack the following morning, still in the frames so they wouldn't get damaged further. The edges were a bit wrinkled, but they were in good condition, considering what they'd been through throughout the years.

When it came time for lunch, she didn't go to her usual spot.

Instead, Marinette kept her hand on the strap of her backpack, walking into the dining hall, scanning the room to see whether Adrien had gotten a table yet.

He had.

She walked right up to him, standing there as she announced without hesitation, "I need to talk to you."

He looked at her with wide eyes.

She didn't answer Alya's question directed at her.

To her surprise, he agreed after a moment's hesitation. Adrien grabbed his bag along with his lunch, making it clear that he thought that it might take more than a few minutes.

They didn't talk as they walked outside. He sat down on the nearest dry bench, putting his bag beside him as he took out his food, taking a bite before staring at her expectantly.

It was a relief that he didn't look close to throwing up any more.

"It'll be easier if you trust me," Marinette started, carefully taking off her bag before rummaging inside. "This might help."

He looked at her suspiciously. "What?"

The first frame she took out had a picture of him in it.

It probably wasn't the best way to start the conversation.

"I—_what_?" Adrien blurted, putting his food on his lap, aghast. "Why... why do you have that?"

"You gave it to me," she simply replied. Then, as she put it back into her bag, she pulled out the other one she'd packed.

The silence between them was awkward.

Adrien reached out and took the frame into his hand, not tearing his eyes away from it. She couldn't tell his expression, but it was clear that it wasn't one that was positive. And as the seconds passed by, the faint sound of chatter and laughter from others students filling the void, Marinette continued to stand there, waiting for his reaction.

His voice was but a whisper as he said, "That's my grandfather."

"Yes," was all she could say to that.

His grip tightened.

"Why are you—" Adrien took in a sharp breath. "Why didn't you tell me?"

She settled with replying, "It was easier."

He swallowed. "But, I..."

It wasn't clear whether she'd made him trust her a little bit or if she'd made it worse.

"You could've—you could've _told_ me," he insisted, sounding lost as he finally tore his gaze away from the photograph, looking up at her imploringly. "I... I deserve that much, don't I?"

It was a response she should've predicted and had planned her answer out in return. But all she could say was, "I'm not good... with people."

He blinked.

"Aloys is dead," she bluntly stated, watching his visible reaction to that. "There's no—there's no reason for you to want to talk to me, after that."

She could see it as he swallowed. "Did you—were you there?"

She didn't answer that.

"You didn't live at a neighbour's house," Adrien started, still holding onto the frame. "Did you?"

For all the time she'd been there, that was the cover story that he'd been told. And when he was little, he was more than willing to accept it, to readily agree that a neighbour's child would be over at his grandfather's house for the most part of each day, even going as far as to have a room in the home.

She wondered when he started to question that.

It was because of that that she honestly answered, "He took me in because of you."

His face crumpled at that, tearing his gaze away from her to stare back down at the picture.

It came out as a whisper when he asked, "Why do you have this?"

"It's mine," she said.

He made a frustrated noise. "That—that's not what I asked!"

"It's mine," Marinette repeated, gently tugging it out of his hand to put back into her bag. "And it—it's why I'm here, now."

That only proved to confuse him further.

The bell rang.

He didn't make a move to stand up.

"He wanted you to be safe," she reminded him. "So, let me do what I have to. You don't have to like me."

She didn't give him a chance to reply.

-x-

"Hey," Marinette started, the hold on her phone a bit awkward due to the blood coating her hand. "You here yet?"

"Almost," Chloé replied, speaking fast. "Open the window a bit more, will you? I don't want to shatter the glass."

With a glance to the struggling body on the floor that was still tied up with her bandalore, along with her blade piercing one of the hearts permanently, she deemed it safe for her to wander over to the window for a short period of time.

And when she did crack it open a bit more, she only just jumped to the side when Chloé leapt through the window, landing not-so-gracefully onto the floor, knocking over a vase in the process.

"Nice one, idiot," she complimented, voice full of sarcasm.

Chloé scoffed.

Then, without waiting for Marinette to approve of her actions, Chloé crouched down and thrust her fist against the man's chest, shattering his ribs and causing splatters of blood to splash around her. She punched again, violently crushing another area, and it was when the struggling ceased and the body flickered for a moment before bursting into ash—falling down onto the puddle of blood, immediately becoming soaked with the red liquid—that Chloé stopped her movements at all.

There was no visible change in her.

She wasn't even breathing heavily.

"Feel better now?" Marinette asked as she tugged the bandalore back.

Chloé shot her a dirty look.

"A punching bag might be a better choice for you," she quipped.

"They don't actually make me stronger," Chloé shot back. "A waste of time _and_ money. I'm not going to go to a gym and fucking pretend to get fit. It's ridiculous."

She hummed. "You've got a lot of strong feelings on this."

"Fuck off." Chloé flexed her bloodstained fingers, no sign that she'd hurt herself in that less than a minute of brutality. "You caught him quicker than I thought you would."

There hadn't been any time for him to fight back.

"He was busy taking food out of the oven," Marinette stated. "And the front door was left open."

That made Chloé laughed. "Yeah?"

"You're welcome to eat it, if you want," she offered, gesturing towards the kitchen. "It's not really my kind of thing."

Chloé wrinkled her nose. "It smells awful."

"Okay, let's skip that, then," she said, agreeing. "Want to get something to eat elsewhere?"

The response she got to that was, "You better be paying."

Marinette held up the man's wallet with a wide grin. "Sure, why not? I doubt he'll miss this."

Chloé laughed.

It was the most normal part of her life. While Chloé wasn't the type of person that she'd go to to spill all of her secrets—she didn't have anyone like that—she didn't mind spending time with her. While she did occasionally eat dinner with Fu, it was always awkward, the two of them never quite knowing what to say to each other.

She didn't have that problem with Chloé.

There had been suspicion from both of them in the beginning, but Chloé had been interested when she'd seen Marinette throw someone off the side of a building.

It had been followed up with her killing the demon, but she'd twisted her ankle and sprained her wrist in the process.

"Got news for you," Chloé announced as they sat down in a diner together, one that wasn't fancy enough to get their orders taken at the table. "Simon got killed again a few days ago."

She almost choked on her laughter. "_Again_?"

"Yeah," Chloé confirmed, smile showing her teeth. "Bastard's so fucking weak now. It'll take him _years_ to get it back, even if it's not casually."

Marinette asked, "And how many times have you died?"

"Never," Chloé answered, raising his head up haughtily. "You think I'd be weak enough to stoop to that level? Hell no."

She squinted. "Is it really stooping if you get murdered?"

"I'm not weak," Chloé retorted.

"Because of me," Marinette countered. "You've gained, what? Two hearts since we've been working together?"

Chloé scoffed. "And you think that's all because of you?"

"I think without me, you'd still be stuck at the bottom," she pointed out. "How many kills have I gotten you?"

Tossing her hair over her shoulder, Chloé replied, "Not enough for you to have that attitude."

Marinette snorted. "Sure."

"You're getting mighty stuck up," Chloé remarked.

She was almost tempted to wink. "You're rubbing off on me."

"That's called pedophilia," Chloé deadpanned.

Marinette grinned. "Care to tell me how old you are, then?"

"Older than you'll ever reach," was the response to that. "I bet you're going to die before you're fourteen."

"...I _am_ fourteen."

Chloé raised her eyebrows. "You could've fooled me."

Marinette scowled at her. "You don't appreciate me."

"That's because you're a human," Chloé said. Marinette was sure that if she was close enough, Chloé would've patted her head. "You're destined to me below me, you know."

She asked, "Why are you on Earth, then?"

"Nowhere else to go." Chloé shrugged. "This sure as hell beats the alternative, so here I am."

Taking a napkin out of the dispenser, Marinette started to slowly rip it up. "Where else could you be?"

"Not here," Chloé cryptically replied.

It was worth a try.

There wasn't much to be known about it. Aloys hadn't told her anything, and while Fu was more than happy to tell her the average locations for a demon hearts, how long it took them to regenerate, and the best way to deal with them, he didn't have much information to offer her about the backstory behind them.

And the fact that angels had been thrown into the mix made it even worse.

"No more angels lately?" Marinette asked between bites of her food.

Chloé waved her hand dismissively. "Killed a human and ended up dying."

"But they'll be back, right?"

"No," Chloé looked at her strangely. "Do you not fucking listen to me?"

She blinked. "What?"

"They don't reincarnate, idiot," Chloé scolded her. "It's one life and that's it for them."

"...I don't think you've told me that before," she cautiously replied.

"Oh." Chloé didn't look too bothered about that, reaching out and taking a sip of her drink. "Well, now you know. We think that's why they're such a bitch to one-on-one—stronger than us solo, I mean."

It was a lot to take in all of a sudden. "Stronger?"

"Yeah," Chloé confirmed. "But, like, what's the fucking point when we outnumber them so? Sure, they got the human, but they lost one of their pitiful amount for that. It hardly seems worth it."

Curious, she enquired, "Any idea if they power up from it?"

Chloé narrowed her eyes. "Stop phrasing it like it's a game."

"No."

"Then, I'm not telling you," she proclaimed.

Marinette grinned. "You don't know, do you?"

"How about you fuck off?" Chloé childishly countered. "You're awfully annoying for someone I could snap in half."

The threat did nothing to make her feel uneasy. "I do love it when you flirt with me."

As always, she walked past Adrien's home on her way back. It wasn't dark enough to see whether his light was on, but she'd checked his social media account, along with Alya's and Nino's, and she didn't think that they'd gone out anywhere without announcing it there.

It was just a small comfort for her, a routine that she stuck to.

Alya had her own routine, too.

"You didn't, like, ask Adrien out or anything, did you?"

Marinette stared at her in confusion. "Pardon?"

"Last week," Alya clarified, looking close to laughter. "When you called him outside to talk privately? He won't tell us what it was about."

For Adrien not to mention anything to his friends—not even the real reason that he was grounded from getting home late—was more than she'd expected him to do.

"That's because it's none of your business," she bluntly replied.

"Rude," Alya said, crossing her arms. "You're really not going to tell me, are you?"

Marinette looked at her blankly. "We're not friends."

"Yeah, but you're not with Adrien either," Alya pointed out, nodding her head as though she agreed with herself. "You're not threatening him with your secret gang or something are you?"

She questioned, "Secret gang?"

Alya waved her hand dismissively. "Another rumour. Apparently, you're a delinquent that gets into petty crime."

Well, it wasn't that far from the truth.

"That's a smile!" Alya loudly accused, pointing straight at her, grinning widely. "I—_yeah_! That counts as almost a laugh, doesn't it?"

She straightened up her expression. "I don't know what you're talking about."

Alya just continued to smile.

And when it came time for lunch, it wasn't Alya that sat down beside her.

Rather, when she looked up and slipped her headphones down to her neck, she saw Adrien standing in front of her, only one strap of his bag on and his lunch held in his hands.

His friends weren't in sight.

"Hello," she started, unsure.

"Can I—" Adrien cut himself off, frowning. "I'm sitting with you."

And as he really did sit down on the bench beside her, she scooted to the side a little to give him more room. It was silent at first, with him not looking at her and focusing his attention on his food instead, seeming to take longer than normal with each bite, while Marinette felt too awkward to eat.

Unable to relax, she asked, "Why are you here?"

"Because," Adrien said, hand going up to brush the crumbs away from his mouth. "I'd feel a lot better if I knew about my stalker."

She frowned. "I'm not stalking you."

He turned his head to look at her. "How did you find me? That night, I mean."

There wasn't a good way to reply to that without making him feel uncomfortable, was there? "I'm not answering that."

"You were homeless, right?" he blurted. Then, as he grimaced, surely realising how weird that question was to ask, he hastily corrected, "That's kind of what my parents thought when I told them about you before. They—they only really told me after my grandfather passed away."

"I was," she replied, honest.

It was either her admitting it or that she'd replied at all that had him surprised. "Where did you go? After?"

"Around," she said, dodging the question. The lie that she told others slipped out easily. "I'm with my grandfather now."

"Oh," he breathed. "That's—I'm happy you found him."

Her smile didn't reach her eyes. "Thanks."

"But you—you said that you're here because of my grandfather," he slowly pointed out, eyebrows knitted together in confusion. "What did you—why did you say that?"

"He didn't want you to know," she carefully replied.

He frowned. "Why?"

"Because of the reason you were kidnapped," Marinette answered.

"Can you stop—stop talking in riddles or whatever?" he ranted, running a hand through his hair, visibly frustrated. "I'm not... I don't think I'm asking for much, am I? I just—I want to _know_ what's going on."

Instead of addressing that, she asked, "Why didn't you tell your friends about me?"

He stared at her in confusion. "What?"

"Alya tried to get me to tell her," she clarified. "About what we spoke about before."

"Right, you're..." Adrien's shoulders sagged as he leaned back against the bench. "You're friends with her, aren't you?"

"I wouldn't say that," she replied. "She's just been interested in me lately. I'm not sure why."

The laugh that left him didn't sound genuine. "Because she feels bad that you don't have any friends."

"Why?"

"What do you mean why?" He shot her a puzzled look. "It's—everyone has one or two friends, don't they?"

She shrugged. "You tell me."

"You're..." Adrien trailed off, only continuing after he'd swallowed another bite of his lunch. "I don't really remember much about you."

Marinette reached up to tuck some stray hairs behind her ear. "I figured that out already."

"Were you—_are_ you upset that I didn't recognise you?" he asked, earnest.

"No," she answered, not hesitating. "I told you, it's—it was easier when you didn't notice me."

"But were you upset?" Adrien persisted. "When I didn't—didn't look at you twice?"

There wasn't an honest reply she could give him there. It had been a worry—back before she'd transferred in, when Fu had given her schoolwork to try and make it so she was up to par with the other students before joining the school—that Adrien would recognise her, maybe even her face, but that hadn't been the case at all.

He'd smiled at her politely, just like the other students, before going back to talking to his friends.

Her feelings had been conflicted.

"I don't know," she answered.

"You were—" Adrien cut himself off again, taking another bite of his food. It seemed that he was unsure on what to say most of the time, stalling his responses. "I really liked you, you know. When you—when you stopped calling, I didn't—I thought you... died or something."

She wasn't ashamed to say, "I ran away."

His eyes were wide. "What?"

"When Aloys... died," she said, wording it carefully, even though it still caused him to look sad at the mention of his grandfather. "I didn't know what to do, so I left."

There was no mistaking that he was blinking more than needed to try and keep his eyes dry. "Why?"

"I was never registered to live there," Marinette admitted.

He cleared his throat. "You really were homeless, weren't you?"

"I already said yes," she pointed out.

"But that's—that's not something that's... spoken about often," he replied. "I'm just finding it hard to believe."

Her smile didn't reach her eyes. "You literally found me living in the woods."

Raising his eyebrows, he asked, "I did?"

"Yes," she confirmed, finding that particular subject easy to talk about. "I lived there for a while, then Aloys let me into the building in the back—the practice one."

And as he spoke, his voice was quiet. "I didn't... I don't remember that."

But that was fair. It was years ago, a passing moment in time; what stuck out to Marinette most back then were the turning points for her—from being invited in for warm meals, to her own room that she could control the locks of.

All of that was because of Adrien.

It was fine that he didn't remember.

"That's fine," she said, reiterating her thoughts. "I didn't—I don't expect you to."

And, somehow, that made him look even sadder than before. His food was left uneaten on his lap, eyes looking glassy as he stared at her, and Marinette turned her gaze away, staring down at her feet instead.

"I don't—I don't know what to think of you," Adrien admitted in a whisper. "The things I saw you do... that's not—it's not _normal_."

His voice had trembled.

"No," Marinette agreed. "But neither is being kidnapped, is it?"

"I don't understand anything," he said.

Taking a moment to think about her answer, Marinette lifted her head back up, taking in his expression, trying to see whether he was being serious or not. While keeping him at a distance had helped, that wasn't really an option any more, was it?

She wetted her lips. "I don't think you'll even believe me if I tell you."

"Try me," he coaxed.

"I'll make you a deal," she offered. "If you give me a warning when you go out with your friends in the future, I'll tell you."

He squinted. "That's all?"

"It makes it easier for me," Marinette pointed out.

"I—okay," Adrien hastily agreed, fumbling as he reached into his pocket, bringing out his cell phone. "I can just text you it, right?"

She got her own device out. "That works."

Adrien's name was added to her small list of contacts.

-x-

When it came time for Adrien to ask more of her, it was in a public place. He'd said that lunch wasn't enough time, nor for either of them to get out everything that they wanted to, and they had to wait until he was no longer grounded.

Within that time, he'd text her twice that he was going out with friends. He'd sent another a few hours later, saying that he'd gotten home safely.

She didn't reply to them, but the technology meant that he could see that she'd read them.

Adrien chose a café.

It wasn't one she'd been to with Chloé before.

She ordered a hot drink before approaching his table slowly, making sure her footsteps were loud enough not to scare him. Adrien was slumped in his seat, a drink already on the table in front of him, phone out as he rapidly tapped away at his screen.

She cleared her throat.

And as he shot up to sit up straight, putting the phone screen down onto his lap, she couldn't quite identify his expression.

"Hello," she greeted, taking the seat across from him.

"I—hi," he stuttered, sounding a bit strangled. "You're... I didn't expect you to be so early."

She frowned. "I'm here at the time you told me to be."

"Yeah, I just—I wasn't expecting it," he awkwardly explained, reaching up to run a hand through his hair, making it fall out of place. "So."

"So," she echoed.

He winced. "How do you want to start this?"

"That depends how much you want to know," she replied.

It was early morning on the weekend, and the room wasn't that busy. They were bar enough away from the bar that the employees wouldn't hear them, not unless they raised their voices, and the only other customer was across the room.

It was as good as it was going to get.

"Maybe the whole... murder thing?" It came out sounding like a question. And from his grimace, he was very aware of that. "You killed someone."

"Temporarily," Marinette admitted. "They... kind of have unlimited lives?"

He spluttered, "What?"

There was a lot that he wasn't going to believe without proof. "Why don't we start with you telling me what you saw?"

The waitress dropped off her drink.

"That night?" And with her nod of confirmation, Adrien adjusted how he was sitting, clasping his hands in his lap, staring down at them instead of at her. "I—I don't really know. I wasn't knocked out or anything? Like, I didn't have any injuries, but... it went like I was on a rollercoaster, if that makes sense?"

"They can move fast," she said.

"I guess."

She asked, "When did they—when did you get taken? Where?"

Adrien leaned back in the chair, finally looking at her again. "I... it was just after Alya and Nino left? I was about to text my parents to pick me up, but I wanted to get a drink from the shop first."

She prompted, "Were you close to the store?"

"Not really," he denied.

They probably hadn't been caught on camera, then. There was always the chance that they'd decreased their age—from what they actually were—to be unrecognisable, but demons rarely committed crimes in plain view, or somewhere where it could be recorded and broadcast for humans to see.

"I don't really know what happened," Adrien confessed quietly. He ran a hand through his hair again, surely a sign that he was nervous. "But then, I was tied up? And they just... I was left there. In that room."

"Okay," Marinette said, unsure on how to comfort him. "And after I left the room?"

"I almost called the police," he admitted, looking a bit sheepish at that. "But I—my hands were shaking too much, and I kept getting the number wrong. And then, I... I heard noises."

It wasn't as though she'd been trying to be quiet.

She didn't want to put words into his mouth.

And so, it took a while for him to actually be able to explain it. Adrien fiddled with his hand in his lap, averting his gaze from hers, and when he finally started to talk, he ran messed with his hair again before touching the back of his neck for a little too long.

"I thought you were hurt," he whispered. "I—I saw him holding you up? But then, you—I don't know how you did it, but he... like, stumbled over and just... disappeared."

"I stabbed him," she clarified. Then, after making sure that he was looking at her, Marinette tapped specific areas on her chest, one as far down as her abdomen. "It has to be done quickly, or they'll regenerate and heal the damage."

He stared. "That means absolutely nothing to me."

"You've probably—you've watched supernatural things on television, right?" Marinette asked.

Warily, Adrien nodded.

"Consider it like that," she advised. "They're... well, demons."

"Demons," he repeated. There was no emotion in his voice.

"Yes," she confirmed, still grateful that the café was close to empty. The other group had gotten louder, meaning most of the chatter in the room was from them, and none of the staff were coming over to her and Adrien's side. "And they... do you want me to sugarcoat this or not?"

He swallowed. "Don't."

"Are you sure?"

"Please, just—just tell me," he stuttered out.

Marinette tugged her sleeve down, clenching it with her fingers for a source of comfort. "There's two ways for them to gain power—like them being strong enough to pick me up with one hand, or so fast you can barely realise what's happening—and one of those is... killing specific humans."

Adrien choked out, "Kill?"

She made sure not to look away from him. "Yes."

It didn't do anything to comfort him, but why would it? "I—_what—_"

"That's why I make sure you make it home safely," Marinette explained. "It would surprise me if one ever tried to snatch you from your home; it's usually when someone's out. The lack of walls makes it easier, I guess."

But the casual way she'd been talking about it, much as she would've to Chloé, only made it worse again. Adrien was growing pale, mouth falling open but no sounds escaping him, and his eyes were starting to look wet.

She really didn't want to make him cry again.

"I'm here to protect you," she reminded him, but it wasn't in the softness tone. "I—you need to cooperate with me to make it happen, okay?"

His lower lip trembled.

"You don't even have to talk to me," Marinette quietly said. "Hell, you can ignore. I just—I need to know where you are? It was too close last time."

His voice cracked as he asked, "But you found me."

"I—" Marinette cut herself off, frowning. "That'll only work if you have your phone on you."

"My _phone_?" he questioned. "You—did you track me?"

She met his gaze. "Yes."

"That's—that's not—" Adrien spluttered, suddenly more animated, talking faster than he had for a while. "You can't do _that_!"

Not-so-gently, she pointed out, "If I didn't, you wouldn't be alive right now."

That made him be quiet.

"I'm not trying to scare you," she said. "I'm just trying to get you to understand that without me looking out for you, you'd be dead, Adrien."

But instead of focusing on that, he remarked, "That's the first time you've said my name."

Marinette's brow furrowed. "And?"

"I'm scared," he confessed quietly. "I'm scared of you."

She didn't know how to respond to that.

-x-

Avoidance was how Adrien dealt with learning about demons—if he even believed her in the first place.

When she tripped over when everyone was running laps for class, Marinette was surprised that Alya ran over and offered her a hand, asking whether she was okay.

Marinette's gaze went behind her to see Adrien slowing his run to a jog, staring her way before averting his eyes when she'd noticed him, going back to running.

They didn't talk.

Still, he continued to send updates when he was going out, but it wasn't very often.

She appreciated that he told her when he went out for dinner with his parents.

It wasn't a friendship. It was a not-so-perfect system that she hoped they could stick to, even if he couldn't look her in the eyes. And although he didn't pale when looking at her any more, it didn't make it any better that he didn't want to be in the same area as her.

She told herself it was fine.

Because it was, wasn't it? It was keeping him safe, and having Adrien at a distance was supposed to make things easier—

He was moved in front of her for one of their lessons together, but he never turned around.

Marinette wasn't offended.

They had different priorities, different things to focus on in their lives. Adrien was preoccupied with trying to get good grades and getting home on time, not wanting to be reprimanded by his father again, while Marinette was trying to find the best way to get blood out of her clothing.

It turned out that she wasn't so good at that.

"What's on your sleeve?" Alya asked.

Marinette held her hand out to stare at the dried splatters she'd missed. "I had a nosebleed."

"You feeling okay?" Alya questioned, actually sounding concerned.

It was a little bewildering. "I'm fine."

"Are you sure?" Alya persisted. "If you're not, you can always go to the nurse—"

"I'm _fine_," she reiterated. "Really."

Alya pursed her lips.

And she was.

There wasn't one person that she could talk to completely about what was going on. Fu could hardly be classed as a mentor when they barely interacted, Chloé couldn't be trusted with the important details of her life, and Adrien was scared of her.

_Scared_ of her.

For someone who had unknowingly given Marinette all the good things in her life—brief stability, genuine affection that she didn't know how to deal with—Marinette had never expected for him to feel so—so negatively towards her.

But as long as he cooperated, it would be okay.

Her knees had scabs by the end of the day.

Marinette was used to it at that point. It paled in comparison to the bruised neck that had only just healed, or the awkward way she'd landed on her body parts in the past, almost breaking her bones.

It was a wonder that she'd never seriously hurt herself.

Chloé remarked the same.

"How are you not dead yet?"

Marinette shrugged. "Dumb luck, I guess."

"You are pretty dumb, yeah," Chloé agreed, nodding her head.

Crossing her arms, she replied, "How dare you."

"Since you care so much about being a good student," Chloé started, completing skipping onto a new topic. "When does your school split for a break?"

Marinette was bewildered. "Eh?"

"Answer me, idiot," was all she got in response to that.

"Soon there's a week off," she slowly revealed. "Then it stops for summer in, like, two months."

Chloé made a point of humming in contemplation. "Can't you skip a day?"

"I—" Marinette paused, considering.

There wasn't any point in trying not to draw attention to herself any more, was there? Adrien knew of her existence, almost everything behind it, and it wasn't as though not being there for one day would cause him to change his reaction to her.

She was sure that with warning that she wouldn't be there, it would be okay.

"Why?" she asked.

Chloé clicked her fingers, pointing her index finger at her with a wink. "I'm going to take you out."

"...I'm still fourteen," she slowly reminded her.

Chloé laughed. "Not like that."

"Then, what do you mean?" Marinette questioned. "Because I don't trust anything about you."

Except—except that wasn't so true any more, was it? There was a legitimate reason to keep Chloé separate from the rest of her life, but Chloé was almost an integral part to what she did day-to-day.

Maybe they were friends.

"A field trip, let's say." Chloé's smile was all teeth. "There's always sights to see outside of the city, you know?"

Marinette said, "The thought of travelling with you is actually awful."

"I'll drive," Chloé countered. "There's no way I'd be able to put up with you and countless others rubbing up against me in public."

There was one thing she had to ask.

"How old are you on your driver's license?"

Chloé scowled. "Fuck off."

"You have wrinkles, don't you?" she persisted, grinning. "You'll look like my mother."

With a huff, Chloé replied, "Only if you're adopted."

"Nothing says you had to fuck a white man, Chloé," she deadpanned.

The look she got in return was close to murderous.

It was selfish for her to consider taking time away from the city, but it had been weeks since the incident with Adrien. And although his emotional damage definitely hadn't been healed, there hadn't been anyone looking at him a second time for nefarious reasons, from what she could tell.

The system between them was working well.

And with the list of names Chloé had given her being crossed out slowly, she had to wonder whether she'd actually made a dent to the demons in the city. She knew that there were lots of them, that they vastly outnumbered angels—but she had no actual _numbers_ to back up that information.

She just hoped she never met an angel.

The name didn't fit them at all.

She wondered whether she'd called Adrien that when they were kids.

He looked her in the eyes the following day for longer than normal.

It wasn't much progress, but it was there. He wasn't throwing up from the sight of her, which was always good.

The bad part, however, was Alya trying to mesh them all together to be friends, even after the past failed attempt. It wasn't during lunch that time, though; rather, it was during a class where the teacher had allowed them to make groups of four to work on the lesson together.

Alya dragged her across the classroom.

It was still awkward.

Alya and Nino were more than happy to talk to her, but the main difference was that when Marinette was there, Adrien was quieter than normal. He wasn't making quips, instead focusing on scribbling down notes, even though the teacher wasn't reprimanding anyone for not devoting all their attention to working.

Marinette wanted to leave.

There was no need to force it. Adrien wasn't comfortable with her, and with Alya trying to insert her in their friendship, it was making it painfully obvious that she wasn't wanted there.

And so, the following day when she sat next to Alya, she said, "I don't want to be around Adrien."

Alya looked at her with a strange expression. "Why?"

She decided to somewhat admit the truth, "I... we're not comfortable with each other."

"He's never said anything like that," Alya replied, perplexed.

"Ask him and you'll see," she suggested.

Alya still didn't look like she believed her at all. "If you say so."

The conversation wasn't brought up again.

Marinette continued to walk behind them when they went home—with Alya turning to wave at her when she sectioned off, Nino sometimes doing the same—but Adrien kept his gaze away, shoulders looking stiffer when it was just him.

It wasn't clear whether it was because of her presence or not.

The warm weather meant that her jacket was getting a bit too hot to wear on top of the rest of her uniform, especially when walking, but there was only so much that the blazer could hide underneath. There were times when her clothing looked misshapen on one side from her concealed blade.

If the teacher ever stopped her from changing in the toilet stall, she wouldn't be able to keep it hidden forever.

Then again, she could always fake a note from Fu to excuse her from exercising.

It wasn't as though she needed it.

Adrien had started rolling up the sleeves of his shirts, not swapping to the short-sleeved ones that were also available, and tying his blazer around his waist—which was against the school rules, but teachers got exasperated after telling so many students not to do it at once.

Keeping to herself wasn't really the point of her being there any more. The days of being in the background, ignored other than the gossip and whispers, had vanished the day that she'd saved Adrien.

It was never the plan to be a top student, was it?

Marinette hadn't seen her life being quite as long as it had. When she was little, the thought of turning into a teenager had been a terrifying one when she had barely been able to find a good place to sleep.

It was because of Adrien that she had a sense of stability at all.

The next time she interacted with him, it was to catch a ball before it hit him.

He'd had his back turned, talking to a class-mate, not paying attention to the group that was currently playing. It was luck that Marinette was also waiting for her turn.

Her turned to look at her, wide-eyed.

Alya had to say, "Nice catch!"

Adrien didn't say anything at first, not until a few awkward moments had passed, when it was starting to become apparent that he was either too surprised to talk to her, or that he really didn't want to.

"I—thanks," he choked out, turning away from her.

It was more than she'd gotten before.

He continued to not look towards her when he walked home alone.

Marinette had started to tie her jacket around her waist, blazer left forgotten in her bedroom, but unless there was an assembly, no student got detention for not wearing them—it was just met with a tone of disappointment.

Her headphones stood out even more when she wasn't bundled up in a scarf.

It was because of that that Nino asked her, "What kind of music do you like?"

She was surprised that he'd even come over to talk to her in the first place.

"Alya's sick," he pointed out. "So, am I good to stay here until the teacher comes?"

"Sure?" It came out sounding like a question.

"They haven't been confiscated yet, have they?" Nino asked, gesturing towards her bag where her headphones were resting upon. Then, when she shook her head, he whistled. "I kept wearing them whenever I could in my first year, so now it's like there's a warrant for their arrest or something."

Marinette was almost amused at that. "Jealous?"

"Hell, yeah," he agreed. "They don't even care that you wear them during break. _I'm _not allowed to!"

She shrugged. "I don't know what to say to you."

"Tell me your secrets," he insisted. "I want to know how you get away with it."

It was too tempting not to say, "Actually pass classes?"

Nino sucked in a breath through his teeth, expression exaggeratedly offended. "I can't believe you just said that."

"Sorry," she said, insincere.

"No, don't be," Nino quickly replied, reaching up and pushing his glasses to sit back on his nose properly. "I think that's the first joke you've said to me."

She raised her eyebrows. "Probably because this is our first conversation."

"Who knew there was a personality beneath all your edge?" he remarked.

"Edge?" Marinette questioned.

That caused him to snicker. "I—don't worry about it."

The teacher came in after that.

Alya's behaviour towards her hadn't changed—she was still talking to her in the class they sat beside each other, and more than happy to pair up when the only groups required were for twos.

It was becoming a routine again. Nothing was quite out of the ordinary any more; Marinette was becoming less surprised when Alya or Nino spoke to her, the thought that they'd stop the following day starting to become squashed, and Adrien's avoidance of her was consistent.

She just caught him staring sometimes.

While she wouldn't call Chloé predictable, she was relaxing more around her.

"You don't actually have friends, do you?" Marinette asked, amused.

Chloé shot her a dirty look.

The lack of an answer spoke volumes.

But Marinette—Marinette was much the same, wasn't she? Chloé was from a world where it was normal for demons to lash out at each other in private, to temporarily end another's life and increase their power, while Marinette felt too disconnected to really try and bond with someone.

Who she spent the most time with was the kind that she spent a lot of time killing.

And wasn't that _strange_?

"I'd only get enjoyment out of killing you," Chloé replied with a dismissive wave of her hand. "You're about as pure as the pavement."

"...Are you calling me dirty?" Marinette accused.

Chloé's smile showed her teeth.

And Marinette returned it, the grin reaching her eyes.

She hadn't given her confirmation of their trip yet, wanting to wait until the summer holiday. Adrien either went abroad with his family or he mostly stayed within his home, sometimes going out with his friends, and he'd managed before with only Fu there to check on him every now and then.

Chloé didn't complain too much about that.

The break in the routine wasn't from her; rather, it was Adrien pausing one turn after Nino had walked off, staying still on the spot for a moment before turning around to face her.

Marinette stilled to a stop.

Adrien's expression wasn't a positive one. As he walked towards her—actually closing the distance, keeping eye contact the whole time—his body language was anything but relaxed.

And as she pulled her headphones down, the quiet music still able to be heard from her neck, he started the conversation off with, "Was my—did my grandfather do what you do?"

"I don't know," she replied, honest. "He... I only ever saw him fight with other adults."

"Fight?" he enquired, repeating the word underneath his breath in disbelief. "But he—he was _old_."

She almost laughed. "My grandfather's older, but he can still kill someone."

Adrien looked horrified at that.

"Demons," she clarified. "He was a friend of your grandfather's, too. That's how I found him."

The lie was getting easier to tell.

His voice was quiet as he asked, "Really?"

"You can ask him, if you'd like," she offered.

He tried to be tactful as he replied, "That doesn't seem... safe."

"He wouldn't hurt you," Marinette assured him.

"Could I—would it be possible to talk to him on the phone instead?" he sheepishly asked.

Knowing that even her being there in person wouldn't make him feel safe, she answered him with, "I'll ask him for you."

There wasn't anything else to talk about. Words got caught on her tongue, not leaving her mouth, and Adrien just stared at her for an extended amount of time, his expression anything but happy.

Then, he was hastily walking away after blurting out, "_Bye_."

She didn't say anything back.

-x-

Fu wasn't active any more.

That's what he liked to say, at least.

His knees hurt when he stood up, but Fu was full of knowledge that he liked to share, and he was a friendly man, even if his intentions weren't always the best when it came to her.

Marinette wasn't under any illusion that he felt any affection for her.

He liked the company sometimes, but he didn't enquire about her cuts and bruises.

The neighbours liked him, shops he visited regularly were always pleased to see him, and when the milk was delivered in the morning, he always made time to talk to the delivery man for a few minutes.

He was a lovely old man on the outside.

But there was—there had to be something not quite right there, right?

Marinette thought that about herself.

She found it hard to worry about others; she didn't rush to their sides if they were hurt, never offered to carry something heavy for someone who was suffering with it, and definitely couldn't relate to the problems that they spoke about.

She felt detached, in a way.

But to her—it was all she'd known outside of Aloys, and briefly Adrien. Nice Lady had been there for a while, along with Kim, but that had been their weakness in the end, hadn't it?

She didn't want to care about others.

It was her selfishness that had gotten her so far.

But when Alya slipped down the stairs at school and toppled backwards, flailing her arms wildly as she tried to regain her balance, Marinette moved quickly, trying to catch her.

They ended up both on the floor, but Alya didn't hit her head.

Marinette did.

It took a while for her to even realise where she was, that the throbbing in her head was because she bashed it, and when she opened her eyes, it was to see various faces hovering in her vision, peering down at her.

She scrunched her eyes shut as she tried to sit up.

Then, as she felt a hand on her shoulder, Marinette recoiled away in surprise, moving much too fast and causing the pain in her head to worsen.

It was Alya that was touching her.

The only reason she went to the nurse was because a teacher came out to see what was holding all of the students up. Marinette ended being the first to be inspected, sitting on the bed while Alya was on the chair beside her, giving short answers to the nurse asking how she was feeling.

Alya was the one to tell the nurse all about what had happened.

She didn't need to go to the hospital, apparently, but she was allowed to choose between the option of having her guardian pick her up, or missing a few hours and staying in the infirmary until she was deemed well enough to return to classes.

She chose the second.

Alya hovered for a bit after being examined—who's only gotten a bit bruised, nothing bleeding—before being told to run back to class.

Marinette was more annoyed at herself than anything else.

The throbbing in her head was going down, she hadn't sprained or broken anything, but she'd bitten into her cheek when she'd fallen back, meaning her mouth was uncomfortable for a while.

When she was released to go back to classes, she only felt a little sore.

The lesson had started ten minutes ago, but the teacher only told her to take a seat, not asking for an excuse for her lateness. And as she sat down, she was able to see Alya waving her arms to get her attention from across the room, trying to mouth something—but the teacher told her off.

So, it was when they were all walking to their next class that Alya was able to talk to her.

"Thank you!" Alya exclaimed, practically running at her before throwing her arms around her shoulders, bringing Marinette into a tight hug that she hadn't been expecting at all. "You—what the fuck? You're, like, an angel or something, Marinette."

Marinette awkwardly patted her back as an answer.

"You're not hurt, are you?" Alya enquired, pulling back so they were face-to-face. Her arms were still around her, though. "There was some blood before—"

"I'm fine," Marinette interrupted.

Alya wasn't taking that as an answer, though. "How's your head?" she asked, going as far as to peer around her, as though she'd been able to see any damage through Marinette's hair. "You haven't got a concussion or anything, have you? That's a thing, right?"

"Alya," Nino interrupted, putting a hand on Alya's shoulder and prying her off of her. "Stop mauling her a bit, will you?"

"_Mauling_?" Alya scoffed.

"If she's injured, I doubt she wants someone squeezing her—"

Alya whirled around to face him, jabbing a finger at his chest. "I am _not_ that inconsiderate!"

It was a little amusing to see them bickering.

But as the two of them continued to talk, Marinette's gaze flickered beside them, to see Adrien standing there with a hand on the strap of his backpack, off to the side with an unsure expression.

He wasn't looking away from her.

Marinette slowly raised a hand to wave at him.

And, somehow, that made him crack a smile before he raised a hand to his mouth, clearing his throat. Then, he announced, "We're going to be late if you two keep flirting."

"I'll flirt with you next time," Nino promised, patting his friend's shoulder in sympathy.

Adrien snorted at that.

And Marinette—Marinette wasn't walking behind them. Instead, Alya stayed behind, looping her arm around Marinette's without so much as asking, before they all set off in the direction of their next lesson.

Her head was still throbbing, cheek feeling a little swollen on the inside, but she felt happy.

And when school finished, Alya walked right up to her.

"I'm not letting you walk alone," she proclaimed. "What if you faint or something? I'm not taking no for an answer."

Marinette didn't really protest to it, not after she saw Adrien hovering over by the door, looking her way.

The headphones stayed around her neck, but she didn't put them on. It was mostly Alya and Nino talking, dragging Adrien into the conversation at times, and some things were even directed at her. Marinette didn't quite know their personalities; out of all of them, she supposed she knew Alya best.

The snippets of conversation she heard from Adrien didn't compare to actually talking to her like Alya did.

When it came time for Alya to part off first, she pulled Marinette into another abrupt hug. Marinette's reaction was as awkward as before—stiffening in her hold—but it didn't last too long before Alya gave the same treatment to her boyfriend, and then punching Adrien in the shoulder as his parting gift.

Adrien huffed. "Thanks."

Nino started to talk to her about music again.

They liked some of the same songs.

And, to her surprise, Adrien participated in the conversation, too. While he didn't ask her direct questions, he did input his opinion and told Nino that his taste in music was terrible, just to see his reaction.

Nino left them with the comment, "Feel better, Marinette."

She raised a hand and waved at him.

Adrien didn't walk away from her so she was following, but that didn't mean that he looked at her. They were walking side-by-side, sun in their eyes at one point when they turned a corner, and it was terribly awkward.

But he was _there_.

It was so much more than before.

He was the one to break the silence. "Are you hurt?"

She ran her tongue over the part of her cheek that had been hurting.

"No," she replied.

Adrien nodded, seeming satisfied with just that.

He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his trousers, trying to seem casual.

She almost smiled.

Then, as they turned onto his street, Adrien quietly said, "Thank you—thank you for... you know."

Marinette asked, "Why?"

Why would catching his friend warrant that reaction, but not—but not for her saving his life? Perhaps, it was because of the time that had passed, but it still baffled her.

"I... I'm sorry for how I've been with you," Adrien started, scuffing his shoe against the ground. "I just—I thought I was going mad."

And what could she say to _that_?

It turned out that she didn't have to say anything.

"I don't know anything about you," he blurted. "But you—you're doing so much for me, and I don't understand it."

She frowned. "Why?"

To her surprise, he let out a laugh at that. "Is that all you can say?"

"No—"

"I was joking," Adrien interjected, reaching up and running a hand through his hair. "Can I ask you something? Please?"

Marinette paused, taking in his expression as he looked at her, not tearing his gaze away. "Okay."

"Why me?" he questioned, frazzled. "You—why are you doing all this for _me_?"

Her brow furrowed. "Isn't it obvious?"

"It's not," he denied, releasing an audible breath. "I... it doesn't make any sense to me. We spent one summer together, and yet—and yet you're here, being my _bodyguard_?"

It was so hard to put it into words, wasn't it? The first time in memory that she had a warm home, someone making hot meals for her and making sure that she was truly taken care of—it was all because Adrien had wandered into the woods and come across her.

The blind kindness he'd shown her as a kid was everything and more.

"I'm here because of you," she said.

That just made Adrien looked more stressed. "That doesn't make sense," he insisted, hands gripping at the roots of his hair before letting go. "But—why? _Why_?"

"You—" Marinette's voice cracked. "You gave me a home."

He was shaking his head, disbelief clear on his expression. "That's not—I didn't do anything!"

"Aloys took me in because of you," she said, fiddling with the jacket tied around her waist. "Everything—everything I have now, it's thanks to you."

But there was nothing but denial coming from him as he took a step back, protesting, "I was a kid!"

"Yes," she agreed, taking in his wide eyes and tense body language. "But you gave me a purpose. I'm not—I'm not a weak child trying to survive the winter outside any more, all because you wanted a friend."

"That's not because of me!" he spluttered, moving his hands with his words. "That's not—that was my grandfather's choice, not mine! I just... I barely even remember you."

She swallowed. "That's fine."

"How is it fine?" Adrien asked, volume rising, sounding higher-pitched than normal due to his urgency. "If this is because of me, it's—it's my fault that you're killing people, isn't it?"

There was a moment where they only stared at each other.

Marinette didn't know how to comfort him.

He was breathing heavily.

His voice was but a whisper as he questioned, "How is this my fault?"

"Adrien," she started, ever-so-quietly. "They're not—they're not human, remember?"

"That's what you say, but—" Adrien ran his hands through his hair again, pushing the strands away from his forehead.

She asked, "Have you called my grandfather yet?"

Adrien shook his head.

Fu had given the confirmation that he'd talk to him, but Marinette had just assumed that neither of them had mentioned it to her. And so, to see Adrien standing there, denying it, made her curious.

"He could tell you more, if you want to know," she suggested.

But Adrien didn't look thrilled at the thought of that. "I don't—I can't make myself call him. I don't want to... to ruin the image I have of my grandfather. To think that he's like _you—_"

"He was good," Marinette interjected. "He loved you."

"_Good_?" he questioned, a breathless laugh escaping him. "And you're not?"

She replied with, "I don't know."

Adrien stared at her, as though expecting her to elaborate on that.

But she didn't know what to say. Marinette knew that her priorities were skewed; that her sense of purpose was warped compared to others, and that she had trouble caring about other people.

But that didn't apply to him.

For her, Adrien was what she was most sure about.

His reply wasn't what she'd expected. "You saved Alya."

Her brow furrowed. "Did I?"

It didn't really count as that, did it? Marinette had stopped Alya from hitting her head—not from an other-worldly creature that wanted to kill her. There was no comparison there.

"You... you can't be all bad," he said. "Not when you helped her."

It was such a leap for him to make, wasn't it? Just a few days ago, he was still too scared to interact with her, let alone hold eye contact—

"I don't know you," Adrien announced, taking a hesitant step forward. "But I think—I think I'd like to."

Words were caught in her throat, a warm feeling spreading through her chest, but all Marinette could do was stare at him in honest confusion.

He cleared his throat before holding out his hand. "I'm Adrien."

Her throat felt tight.

And, for the first time, Marinette gently shook his hand with hers.

"Marinette," she whispered.

-x-

Another name was crossed off the list.

"The first death is the most important," Chloé reminded her as she inspected her nails. "If I ever get killed, it'll take me fucking _forever_ to get back to where I am now."

"Do you, like, go back down there or something?" Marinette asked, gesturing towards the ground.

The look she got in return to that was full of disgust. "No, you idiot."

"I'm just asking," she said with a laugh. "Do you just—do you wake up again and realise something happened? With the whole missing memory thing."

"I haven't died, remember?" Chloé pointed out.

Marinette made a disappointed noise. "But surely people talk about it?"

"Yeah, but it doesn't make any fucking sense," Chloé replied. "They say that they can just feel that something's missing, but that's weird as hell, isn't it?"

Marinette shrugged. "I don't know."

Chloé got some dirt out from beneath her nails. "If I'm ever at the bottom again, I want you to just keep on killing me."

"...But it's endless."

"And I don't want to live like that," Chloé announced. "Being weak is the fucking worst."

That was easy to agree with.

"Do you get into a lot of fights?" Marinette questioned, curious.

Chloé shrugged. "I usually stay away from others. They're fucking boring to be around."

But with Chloé, she didn't know whether that answer was actually truthful. For someone that always knew the gossip that was going on with other demons, surely it meant that she spent enough time with them to know about it? It wasn't as though there was a secret social media account for them to share everything on—it wasn't _safe_ to do that.

"And yet, here you are, spending time with me," she quipped.

Chloé grinned. "You're not so bad when you're not trying to assert your dominance."

"That's a really weird phrase," Marinette mused. "Please, never use it again."

"Try me, bitch," was the response she got to that.

Marinette laughed.

Her phone chimed in her backpack.

It was from Adrien, saying that he was going out for dinner with his parents. And rather than paste the address from the internet, he sent her to the restaurant's website.

She cut it short with Chloé.

It was dark enough for her to use her bandalore to climb high, to perch herself up to view the restaurant from a visible distance, playing with her phone as she had her headphones on, waiting.

Then, she got another message.

It was Adrien asking whether she was outside.

There was no way that she was visible, not from so high up.

But he—Adrien was actually asking her something else, trying to make conversation, wasn't he?

She replied with a simple confirmation.

Adrien asked her whether she was cold.

Marinette said it wasn't winter.

And he answered by stating that it was still chilly in the evening.

He proceeded to ask how she was amusing herself, whether she was really telling the truth, and then asked whether she had her headphones with her.

The texts stopped, and soon after, she was able to see him from a distance leaving the restaurant, his parents standing by his side.

Ten minutes later, she got a message that he'd gotten home safely.

And for once, Marinette replied to that, thanking him for the update.

He sent her an emoji back.

It was a new development, but she wasn't going to complain about it.

While in school, Alya had dragged Marinette over to eat lunch with them, and she didn't protest to it too much. When it was sunny outside—which was often—they ate outside, but sometimes, she was holed up in a hallway sharing a bench with them, trying to stay dry during the break.

Although she didn't contribute too much to the conversation, still keeping to herself, all three of them had started to talk to her.

Adrien asked to copy her homework one day.

She didn't say no.

He was even smiling at her.

There were moments where she felt terribly out of place, like she wasn't supposed to be there at all as they debated about the latest video game, and it was only when they turned to her to ask her opinion that she had to admit that she was out of touch with that kind of thing.

That caused a bit of a ruckus.

"What—_no_," Nino gasped out, even going as far as to put a hand over his head.

She looked at him in amusement.

That led to her being invited to a gaming night at Nino's.

"I don't think that's a good idea," she replied to that.

The rejection was brushed over at that moment, not brought up again, but it was when she was alone with Adrien, as Alya and Nino were off buying lunch that day, that he asked, "Why don't you want to go? To Nino's?"

"I've never..." Marinette cleared her throat. "I've never been to someone else's home."

Not as a guest, at least.

Adrien's brow furrowed. "But—"

"This is my first school," she pointed out. "I wouldn't—it would be uncomfortable."

"They really do mean it," Adrien said suddenly. "About trying to be your friend."

Marinette just stared at him.

"I do, too," he added on. "If you'd... it would be nice to see you there."

It seemed that with Adrien speaking to her, she was easily swayed to do things.

That was how she really did find herself in front of Nino's front door.

Nino's mother came to answer after she rang the doorbell, opening the door with a welcoming smile. "You must be Marinette?" she supplied.

Marinette gave a quiet confirmation to that.

She was directed up the stairs and to the first room on the right, not even told to take her shoes off. The inside of the house was strange to see when she'd only glimpsed pictures of Nino's social media.

She even knocked on his bedroom door.

"Come in!" Nino called out.

They were all bundled onto Nino's bed, a television almost hanging off the end of the desk and turned towards them, with controllers in each of their laps.

The sight was never one that she'd had before.

"Hi," Marinette greeted.

"You made it!" Alya cheered. She patted the bed beside her as she said, "Come, come. Make yourself comfortable."

And as Marinette perched on the end of the bed, feet still on the floor, Adrien remarked, "You're still in your uniform."

She looked down at what she was wearing. "Yeah?"

It only just occurred to her that none of them were. It was only just over two hours that school had been let out, and she'd done the usual of making sure that Adrien hadn't gotten home safely. It had never really occurred to her that they'd all change clothing—all she'd done was take the books out of her bag.

"Ever played this before?" Adrien asked, gesturing towards the screen.

It didn't look familiar.

And when she said that, Nino patted her shoulder and told her that they'd get her to love it.

It was a bit weird, but it wasn't bad.

Marinette wasn't good at moving her fingers in time to make the character on the screen move, so she ended up dying a lot, but she wasn't frustrated about that. No one seemed annoyed when she failed, not even when it was two versus two, with Marinette dragging someone down the whole time.

The first time she killed someone, Alya pretended to wipe a tear, saying that she was proud of her.

It was just a really strange experience.

The only thing to make it stranger was Nino's mother poking her head in to ask, "Are you all staying for dinner?"

Marinette hadn't realised that was part of the offer at all.

Alya answered for everyone with, "Yes, please!"

She stayed quiet with her protests until Nino's mother called up to say that it was ready, and Nino and Alya went downstairs first.

Adrien was waiting by the door for her.

"I think—"

He cut her off with, "Are you trying to leave?"

Marinette just nodded.

"They won't find it rude—Alya didn't really give you a chance to say—but are you sure you don't want to stay?" Adrien asked. "It won't be so bad."

But the thought of sitting down with Nino's family—in his _home—_was one that was hard to stomach.

"Not today," she said.

Adrien was leaning on the frame of the door at that point. "You're going to be outside anyway, aren't you?"

She put her bag back on. "Do you really need to ask that?"

"My mother should be coming to pick me up," Adrien pointed out.

"I'll leave as soon as she does, then," Marinette replied.

He almost smiled at her. "Sure you don't want to wait inside?"

She shook her head. "This was—this was already too much."

"Didn't you have fun?" he asked.

Honestly, she admitted, "I did."

"Okay." Adrien really did smile at that. "We'll be sure to invite you in the future, then."

"You don't have to—"

Adrien interrupted with, "I had fun with you here."

"Oh," she breathed. "You did?"

"For someone that could end me in a matter of seconds, you are surprisingly useless with technology," he remarked.

It took a moment for her to realise that it wasn't a jab at her. "I can't be good at everything."

He laughed at that. "That's true."

And to think that she'd been able to make him laugh, that he was willingly standing in a room with her without looking like he wanted to leave, was such an achievement compared to a few months ago. Adrien was looking at her with a smile on his lips, no tenseness in his expression, and she found herself smiling right back.

It felt nice.

Nino called up to them.

"Come on," Adrien said, gesturing towards the stairs. "I can cover for you, if you want."

She looked at him in surprise. "You—really?"

"I'll save you from awkwardly fumbling your way out of this," he proclaimed, amusement clear in his voice. "Let's just say you have plans already, yeah?"

And he did. When Marinette quietly said that she had to go home, Adrien explained that she hadn't realised that dinner was included, and that she needed to get home to her grandfather.

Nino's father offered to drive her.

She hastily said no to that.

It was a little chilly outside, so she slipped her jacket on before finding somewhere high to wait. With her headphones on, new music selected and playing softly in her ears, Marinette pulled out her phone to amuse herself.

There was a text from Adrien, asking whether she'd made herself comfortable.

She answered with a simple yes.

He asked for a clue where.

Marinette didn't tell him.

The texts continued to come from him until his father arrived, and then a while after, he confirmed that he'd gotten home, but he didn't stop it there.

Adrien asked her whether she really did enjoy that evening.

It was as though he didn't completely believe her earlier, which she could understand. Marinette had felt out of place, not quite knowing what to do, and her pressing random buttons had resulted in her team losing more often than not.

Adrien continued to text her.

Marinette had to make a stop to buy more credit.

There was no bank in her name, and she certainly wasn't going to ask Fu to use his, so she'd been going day-by-day, only topping up with stolen money when she needed it. It had worked up well with Chloé only texting her now and then, but with Adrien starting to message her more, she had to spend more.

It wasn't her money anyway.

Over the weekend, he asked her what she was doing.

Marinette replied that she was out with a friend.

Some blood had gotten on her phone.

He'd tried to ask more about the friend, but she didn't elaborate.

Chloé, in turn, told her to get off her phone with a lot of cursing involved.

"Yeah, yeah," Marinette muttered, stuffing the device into her pocket. "You're feeling too high and mighty now, you know?"

Chloé threatened, "I could crush you like a bug."

"Go on," she goaded. "I want to be hugged tightly."

Chloé's response to that was to thrust her hand through the woman's chest, destroying the hearts in a matter of seconds.

And as Marinette realised her feet felt wet, she said, "I think I need new shoes."

"Good," Chloé replied. "They were ugly as fuck."

"Okay, no need to judge," Marinette answered back, shaking her foot to get some of the blood off of her shoe. "I've never really been into fashion."

Chloé was sarcastic as she quipped, "Who would've guessed?"

Marinette raised her middle finger at her.

"I'm not being seen with a homeless person," Chloé proclaimed, standing up and brushing any wrinkles out of her clothes, even though her hands were covered in blood and gore. "You're coming shopping with me tomorrow."

She raised her eyebrows. "Am I?"

"Steal a purse or two, we're going big."

With the increase of technology, a lot of people carried less cash around with them. Marinette wasn't in the business of trying to learn the pins for their cards, so it was luck if the person had money in their wallet.

She had a good stash from over the years.

But with Chloé, she didn't know how much money was required for a big spend, as she'd put it.

Marinette filled up two purses, putting them into her bag.

Chloé approved of her clothing as much as usual when she turned up. And, even though she intended to use her card, Chloé was appearing to be the same age as her.

"You'll have to be old eventually," she mused.

Chloé glared at her. "Fuck off."

"The wrinkles look good on you," Marinette said.

And to that, Chloé replied, "Bitch, I look good in everything."

She laughed.

They'd met up at the shopping centre. It was a place Marinette didn't visit often, mostly because it was always crowded and popular. It had a variety of clothing stores for everyone, the more expensive ones, and a lot of cafés and restaurants.

Chloé dragged her into the first store they saw.

"New shoes," was the explanation.

Marinette had to argue that she only needed trainers.

"Fine," Chloé finally relented. "But you're getting a separate pair for school."

It was similar to the films where kids went shopping with their parents.

The last person to do that with her had been Aloys.

While she thought that it wouldn't be too bad, it seemed that Chloé had a way of exceeding expectations.

"Absolutely not," she said to a pair that Marinette had picked up. "They're _ghastly_. The laces don't even match."

Marinette turned her gaze to the shoe. "I think that's the point?"

"Put it down before I kick you," Chloé threatened.

Amused, Marinette stared her in the eyes as she cradled the shoe to her chest. "You'd bully me in public?"

"I'll do so much before, you fucking—"

Chloé's words were cut off by an assistant asking, "Need any help, ladies?"

Marinette choked out a laugh.

She did end up leaving the store with two pairs of shoes, which meant two separate bags because they couldn't possibly fit in one. And since they were hers, Chloé wasn't going to touch them at all and help—but she suspected that even if Chloé bought something, she'd try and make her carry them.

"I don't need underwear," Marinette protested at the next choice of shop.

"All you wear are fucking sports bras," Chloé retorted, disapproval clear in her tone. "Do you even own another?"

She didn't have a good answer to that.

It was even worse when Chloé picked up multiple ones and shoved her into a dressing room with them all, expecting her to model each and every one.

"No," Marinette said.

"I'll buy them," was Chloé's attempt at persuading her.

She snorted. "I have enough money, thanks."

She got away with only trying a few of them on, trying to find the right size. Marinette steered clear of the ones that looked the least practical.

"I need to be secure," Marinette hissed at her. "What if my tit falls out while swinging? That'll be the _worst_."

Chloé snorted. "So, hold your chest with your other arm."

"That doesn't solve anything at all," she shot back.

"Yeah, yeah," Chloé said. "Hurry it up. I'm hungry."

It was such a common thing between them at that point that Marinette knew all about Chloé's taste in food and drink. Chloé probably knew hers, too.

Rather than going for something sweet, they ended up in a restaurant. It wasn't the most expensive in the shopping centre, but it was much more than a café would've been.

Chloé looked the picture of a snotty rich kid sitting across from her at the booth, blonde-coloured hair immaculate and pushed behind her shoulders.

"So," Marinette started, fiddling with the straw of her drink. "There's something I've been wondering about."

"Surprised you've got the mental capacity for that," Chloé remarked.

She chose to ignore that. "If your... kind has such a reputation for killing each other, why hasn't someone killed you?"

"Because I'm too pretty to be dead," was the response to that.

"For real," Marinette urged. "I just—I don't get it? Wouldn't you just... kill anyone you came across?"

Chloé took a deliberate sip from her drink, stalling. "We don't greet each other with violence, you know."

She looked dubious at that. "You don't?"

"We're actually civilised, Marinette," Chloé said, as though they were talking about something mundane. "Besides, if anyone saw me kill another, I'd have a target on my head."

"...For murder?" she asked.

"For being a backstabbing bitch, yeah," Chloé agreed. "You can kill all you like if you're not caught, really. Otherwise, it's just a clusterfuck with murder everywhere. There's an attempt at some peace."

Marinette squinted at her. "You literally gave me a hitlist."

"To do my dirty work?" Chloé grinned. "Yes."

"Can you, like," Marinette started, struggling to word her thoughts correctly. "Do you just _feel_ that someone's like you, or something?"

"Not sure how to describe it," Chloé answered, rolling her shoulders before leaning back against the chair. "It's like, I look at you and just _know_ you're human, right? It's like that, but I can't tell how strong they are. That's up to chance."

"Chance," Marinette repeated. "The hitlist included tiers."

Chloé winked. "We do gossip."

"...People boast, don't they?"

"Oh, always," Chloé confirmed, laughing. "Give anyone a drink and they'll tell you everything, you know? Or not, since you're a baby."

She snorted. "You're also a baby right now."

"But I still look older than you," Chloé replied, putting her hand underneath her chin and smiling at her, striking a pose that would've been more appropriate for pictures. "No one's going to look at you and think anything inappropriate."

"Good," Marinette said, incredulous. "I'm a child."

But, apparently, that was funny to Chloé. "You know, most people your age would argue against that."

"And how old are you, grandma?" she muttered.

Chloé reached across and patted her head. "Older than you, at least."

"I've seen the wrinkles," Marinette said. "I bet your breasts sag, too."

The patting continued, but with more force that time. "I'll trip you."

"Oh, scary," she said, sarcastic. "I'm terrified."

Chloé sat back up properly, smoothing out her clothes. It must've been hard for her to actually touch the table to reach across, even though she was much taller than Marinette was.

Something came before their food.

It wasn't a good surprise.

The call of Marinette's name had her head turning to the side, looking in horror as she saw Alya approaching her quickly, leaving behind the two who were clearly her parents, waiting for an employee to give them a seat.

"I never thought I'd see you here!" Alya remarked as she came to stand in front of the table. She had her hair pulled messily into a bun, loose-looking clothing, and looked much more comfortable than at school. "This your friend?"

Her heart was thumping awkwardly in her chest.

This wasn't—

The two parts of her life were never supposed to _meet_.

There was no friendliness in Chloé's voice as she asked, "And you are?"

"Alya," Marinette stated. "From my school."

"Right," Chloé said, still sounding ever-so-bored. Then, her eyes flickered from Alya's shoes where her laces were only tucked in, to the loose clothing. "I never realised you had friends, Marinette."

If it had been Adrien instead—

"Of course she does," Alya said, bristling at the suggestion. "Aren't you classed as one?"

It hadn't occurred to her that someone on the outside would view Chloé's way of talking to be rude right away.

"We're mortal enemies on a date," Chloé deadpanned.

Marinette almost laughed at that.

Alya looked between them oddly. "I, well—I better get back to my parents. I'll see you tomorrow, Marinette."

There was no words of it being nice to meet Chloé.

And when Alya walked away, Chloé's grin was more mean-spirited than not. "You making little friends now, are you?"

Marinette shrugged.

"Couldn't you pick someone with a better dress sense?" Chloé asked.

Rather than reply to that, Marinette questioned, "If she was—if Alya was pure, would you have been able to tell?"

"According to rumours, yes," Chloé confirmed. "But hell if I know. I've never actually seen one before."

Marinette wanted to keep it that way.

-x-

There had been questions about Chloé, of course.

Alya had told the others about seeing her at the shopping centre. It was one of the first times that Marinette had seen a class-mate and actually acknowledged them, but it was not something she wanted to repeat any time soon.

Then, Alya had followed that up with, "Can I have your number?"

Nino's got added to her contact list, too.

"What school does your friend go to?" Nino asked, showing an honest interest in her life.

Marinette shuffled a bit, trying to get comfortable in her seat. "I don't know? Another one."

"You... don't know?" Alya asked.

She shrugged. "We never really speak about it."

That earned her another odd look.

Thankfully, they moved past it eventually. She wanted the topic of Chloé to be left in the past, but her luck didn't last that long.

Adrien brought it up later. "You never—I didn't know you had any other friends."

Marinette blinked. "I guess I do."

"You guess?" he questioned. "I'm not, like, trying to shame you here or anything. I just—I've never seen you with anyone else."

"Because she doesn't go here," she replied. "And if you saw me all the time, everyone else with you would, too."

He wrinkled his nose. "I get it, you're good at your job."

"Job implies getting paid," she quipped.

And the surprise that flickered across his face from that—the honest shock before it evolved into amusement—made her chest feel warm. "I guess you're right there."

"I don't talk about her because..." Marinette trailed off, checking to see how close Alya and Nino were to them. "I don't trust her with you—any of you."

"You—why?" Adrien questioned, baffled.

She reached up and tucked her hair behind her ear. "She's not exactly... human."

That got a reaction from him.

Adrien appeared lost for words, opening his mouth but nothing coming out before he closed it again, looking at her with wide eyes.

"If you ever see me outside of school," Marinette started, meeting his gaze. "I need you to not approach me, okay? Not if I don't know you're there."

"Why would you—" Adrien cut himself off, running a hand through his hair. "That's not—why would you hang out with one of... _them_?"

The way he said the last word made her laugh.

He made an offended noise at that.

"It's a mutual agreement," Marinette explained. "Plus, she's not terrible company."

"Other than the fact that she'd kill me," he blurted.

He didn't need to be told that directly, then. "Yeah, there's that."

"I'm sorry, I'm just—" Adrien took in a deep breath. "I'm having trouble processing this."

It wasn't until they were walking home that he brought it up again. Alya and Nino had come back into the conversation, changing the subject just with their presence, and Marinette had almost thought that it was past.

"_Why_?" he asked, brow furrowing.

She responded with, "Why not?"

"She's a demon—"

"Which I'm fully aware of," Marinette interrupted. "More than you are."

Adrien breathed out loudly. "I don't understand."

"You don't have to," she stated. "I'm just trying to keep you safe, that's all."

"I've gone all this time without being—"

She butted in again. "From what you know, it's only been once."

"What?" He turned to her with wide eyes. "What do you—what do you mean by that?"

"There's been some before," she said. "They were low-level and didn't act on it immediately. Saw a few following you in their car."

With a whisper he echoed, "Low-level?"

"Weak," she clarified. "It's easier to kill them, in a sense."

It just made him look even more confused.

"You're so..." Adrien trailed off, struggling to find the right words. "You're so casual about all of this."

Marinette countered that with, "Why wouldn't I be? This is what I understand best."

And it was. From being a wisp of a girl living on the streets to having a sword that could cut through anything without much force, there was a change in her demeanour when she'd realised how she could live her life.

She didn't have any regrets about it.

The decision had been made for her when Aloys had taken her in, hadn't it?

"That's awful," he whispered.

She wetted her lips. "Not to me."

"That makes it even _worse_!" he insisted, throwing his hands up in the air. "You're—can't you see how fucked up all of this is? And you're—it's normal to you!"

She tightened her jacket around her waist. "Is that really so bad?"

"_Yes_," he said without hesitation, reaching out and taking hold of her wrist lightly, stopping her from walking forward. "Don't you—don't you want to stop?"

But why would she? For while Adrien met up with his friends and played games, the closest she had to that was her outings with Chloé which ended up with blood on their clothes. She didn't feel bad about it; not when they'd regenerate within a few days on the spot they'd died, memory wiped of the last hours and lost on how they'd managed to die in the first place.

Her reply was steady. "No."

His expression crumpled at that, the grip on her wrist loosening before it was completely gone, and he took a slow step back. "Why?"

His voice had cracked.

Marinette frowned. "Because if I do, who would protect you?"

If anything, that made his expression worse. "But that's not—" Adrien cut himself off, roughing running a hand through his hair. "That's not all you're supposed to do."

"Says who?" she countered, a bit irked that he was so insistent that her decision were wrong. "No one gets to decide my life but me."

"Your parents should!" he blurted. Then, as he realised what he said, Adrien quickly added on, "Oh, shit. I'm sorry, I didn't _mean_—"

"It's okay," she said, not upset from his words.

But that wasn't enough for him. "I'm so sorry," he pleaded, utterly sincere. "I never meant to bring it up—"

"Adrien!" she exclaimed. "It's fine, really."

Because it was.

Parents weren't a concept that she understood fully, but the last time she'd had an adult to her name—it hadn't turned out the best, had it?

"I choose to be like this," Marinette clarified. "And without me, you'd be dead right now. Keep that in mind."

She could see it as he swallowed.

His voice was but a whisper as he finally came out with, "Okay."

There wasn't anyone that had more control of her life than she did, and she wanted to keep it that way. Fu was acting as her guardian, but there was no affection between them. It was clear that as long as she didn't cause trouble in his home, she'd be able to stay there due to his friendship with Aloys.

It wasn't out of his own heart.

Fu did ask whether Aloys' grandson was going to get in contact with him.

Marinette shrugged.

While Adrien didn't approve of her life choices, he didn't stop talking to her. While they were at school, within hearing distance of Alya and Nino, the topics were normal; well, as normal as they could be with her.

They were all trying to get her to watch a new television show, just because they all liked it.

Marinette said she'd see if she had the time.

And when it came time for the evenings, Adrien texted her almost every night. It wasn't always asking where she was; sometimes, it was him asking random questions that came out of nowhere, such as her favourite breed of cat, or whether she knew the best way to make cookies.

It turned out the second was for his mother's birthday, and he sent a picture of the crispy-looking biscuits the following day.

He didn't ask about demons any more.

However, he did ask where she got the bruises on her knees from, along with the cuts and dark-coloured marks she'd acquired on her arms over time.

His horrified expression was the indication that, maybe, she'd been a bit too truthful with answering that when they were alone.

She wasn't good at knowing what the wrong things to say were.

At lunch, Alya pulled out her phone to show her a scene from a horror film.

Marinette remarked, "That's not how those bones break."

Alya and Nino hadn't thought anything about the comment, but she did catch Adrien staring at her, open-mouthed.

It didn't look like a good reaction.

The first time Adrien paired up with her in class, instead of going with Nino as he usually would, it was near the end of the school year.

Marinette had looked up in surprise, not knowing what to say when he smiled before taking the seat beside her.

"Might as well let them flirt, right?" he said.

She just nodded.

They got the classwork done quickly.

It was then that she decided to admit, "I'll be gone for a few days soon."

"When?" Adrien asked.

"The start of the holiday," she replied. "Could you—could you stay inside for a while?"

"I mean, I can try," he said. Then, with a laugh, he added on, "I'll be busy sleeping in for as long as I can get away with it for."

She nodded.

"Where are you going?" he questioned, curious. "Somewhere with your grandfather?"

"No," she denied.

And when she looked at him, he was clearly expecting her to elaborate.

"Taking a trip with a friend," Marinette said, giving in.

He raised his eyebrows. "And their parents?"

"...No."

Surprised, he asked, "You're being allowed to go somewhere _without_ supervision?"

"Considering she can punch a hole through someone's chest? Absolutely."

"Oh." His voice was quiet. "That... friend."

Her reply was short. "Yes."

The only sound between them for a while was the scribbling of their pencils.

Adrien broke it to quietly ask, "You'll be safe, right?"

Him asking that—it meant that he cared about her, no matter how little, didn't it? It could've been that he only wanted her to be fine to go back to guarding him but that—that didn't fit his personality whatsoever.

She decided to take it as a sign that she was doing something right.

"I will."

-x-

"Have a little fun!" Chloé goaded, smiling widely at her as she used one hand to snap someone else's arm. The sickening sound was drowned out from the noise of pain that escaped the man, but Chloé's laughter joined soon after. "This is what you wanted, isn't it, Marinette?"

She was watching the scene in boredom.

"Can you get it over with?" she requested, leaning against a tree.

"You're terribly boring, you know?" And with those words said, Chloé turned the man's head with enough force to render him dead for a matter of minutes.

As the hearts weren't touched, it didn't count as an actual death—just a time for him to recover.

"Give me your sword," Chloé demanded, holding out her hand and wiggling her fingers. "I don't want to get dirty."

"Your knees are literally in the dirt," she pointed out.

Chloé ignored that, continuing to demand, "Give, give."

"Yeah, no," Marinette denied. "You're lucky I'm keeping him tied up at all right now."

Chloé scowled at her. "Stingy."

"Hurry up with your murder. I've got wet wipes in my backpack."

That made Chloé laughed. "How considerate."

When Chloé had proposed getting out of the city, she hadn't expected it to be for a murder spree—then again, she should've predicted that would happen in the first place. It was what they had in common, wasn't it?

And so, Marinette found herself dressed in her new clothes, blood splatters already on her shoes, and far too many cleaning products in her bag as they made their way to their destination for the day.

Chloé made a point of taking off her shirt before destroying the hearts.

"Nice bra," Marinette complimented.

"Thanks, babe," Chloé replied, standing up right, a few splatters of blood on her stomach, but it wasn't visible on her black-coloured shorts. "It makes me look like jailbait when I'm like this, doesn't it?"

"...No one should see it to even think that."

Chloé laughed at that. "It's sweet and kind of gross that you're so innocent."

Marinette's respond was to toss the bag of wet wipes at her.

Once they were cleaned up—with no visible blood on their bodies or clothing—they wandered back out of the woods, following the road back to the car park where they'd left Chloé's vehicle.

Chloé, of course, only had her essentials packed in her bag that she'd left in the car. There was no way that she was going to carry it around, instead putting her purse into Marinette's backpack, and slipping her phone into the pocket of her shorts.

There was a lot of unsaid trust there.

Then again, Chloé could also break her legs if she tried to run off with it.

Trust both ways, then.

The beach wasn't overly crowded, but it wasn't the best quality. Some areas were covered in litter, overs were filled with people sunbathing and taking up all the space, and little children were screeching in the water, ruining any of the peace.

She really couldn't see why Chloé wanted to come.

After scaring away some children to put down a towel, Chloé turned towards her and demanded, "Cream me, Marinette."

"Maybe if you ask me nicely," she replied.

Chloé's upper lip curled in disgust. "Hell no."

"Burn, bitch," Marinette said, sitting down on the towel, stretching her feet out. While trainers were practical, her feet were already sweaty.

Chloé had gone the more fashionable route for sandals, refusing to move quickly and ruin them in the process. It was bad enough that Marinette had faced her discomfort of travelling in a car, leaving Adrien behind with the words that if he thought anyone was looking suspicious, that he would promise to call Fu, but she certainly hadn't signed up for sitting on a hot beach, melting under the sun.

She much preferred the murder.

And when Chloé sat down beside her, pushing her over with a forceful shove, Marinette flopped over to the side, accepting her fate.

The sand was warm against her skin.

"Why are we here?" she lamented.

"To make you stop looking like a ghost," Chloé retorted. "You're fucking ghastly to look at."

She snorted. "How kind of you."

"Listen," Chloé started, leaning back on her forearms, stretched out and taking in as much sun as she could. "I'm not going to associate with you if you grow up to be a total ghoul. Are we clear?"

Marinette squinted. "Ghouls aren't real, are they?"

"I will punch you."

"I'm serious!" She laughed. "Angels? Demons? It might as well all be true, you know?"

Chloé's response to that was, "I will drown you in the sea and no one will find your body."

Her shoulders were shaking with laughter. "Fun."

"Oh, it will be." Chloé's smile was all teeth. "I'll enjoy every second of it, I assure you."

There wasn't much fear for her, not any more. At first, Marinette had been worried that Chloé would backstab her, that she'd hurt her when she was distracted, trying to keep a kill restrained before delivering the final blow—

But that had never been the case.

Slowly, Chloé had proved that she could be trusted.

Fu had told her that all demons were evil; that they only cared for power, regardless of who they were hurting. They were to be feared, to be culled when they could, and that was why there were few hunters stationed in each city.

And yet, it was still all true about Chloé, wasn't it?

The route of their friendship was killing.

But they were on the beach, blood washed off of their skin, and Marinette wasn't nervously glancing at Chloé, wondering when she'd betray her.

She wasn't going to voice that aloud, though.

The amount of times they met up during the week spoke volumes.

"I'll put your damn cream on if you never mention it again," she offered.

Chloé grinned. "No promises."

It wasn't too bad.

Marinette hadn't even thought to buy sunglasses. They were an expense that seemed too frivolous, not well thought out when she was mostly outside at night, but Chloé was barely ever seen twice in the same pair.

The one that she slid down onto her nose that day were white.

"Classy," she commented.

Chloé chose to ignore her.

The most entertaining part of the day was when a kid threw sand in the air in front of them, the majority of it landing on Chloé's face. And as she spluttered, Marinette choked on her laughter, body shaking as she watched Chloé exaggeratedly spit it out beside her.

The children got away without being murdered, somehow.

Marinette slowly clapped. "Impressive."

"I will punt you into the sun," Chloé threatened. "Don't make me."

"Stop flirting with me so openly," she replied, placing the back of her hand against her forehead. "I can't handle all your charm at once."

Chloé tossed sand at her.

She laughed loudly.

It was fun.

Marinette thought it was the most carefree she'd ever been.

Then, Chloé tensed beside her.

"What's up?" Marinette asked, sitting upright and looking at her in curiosity. "You look like you're going to pee yourself or something."

"Over there," Chloé said, lifting her head up up for a moment, pointing with her chin. "The woman in the pink dress?"

Marinette held a hand above her eyes, trying to get some shade from the sun. "Yeah?"

"Demon," Chloé explained.

"That's nice," she replied.

Chloé elbowed her in the ribs, almost hard enough to bruise. "Let's have some fun, shall we?"

She sighed. "What do you want?"

"Lure her out, will you?" Chloé suggested. Although it was phrased like that, there was no denying that it wasn't a request, not really. "I'd be too suspicious. But you, in your prepubescent glory, would be _perfect_."

Marinette looked at her with a frown. "I don't look eleven—"

"Hush, you sweet child," Chloé said, putting both her hands down harshly on Marinette's shoulders. "Go out there and work your innocent charm. Make me proud."

Marinette scoffed. "As if you'd ever be proud of anything other than yourself."

"True." Chloé grinned. "But this'll be fun for the both of us, don't you think?"

It took all of a few seconds of Marinette thinking through her answer for Chloé's grip to tighten.

And so, she gave in. "Fine," Marinette said, pushing off Chloé's hold as she stood up. "What's your plan, then?"

The woman was walking out of the beach, up the stairs to the higher area that led to the car park nearby. There was a narrow walkway that led into the forest up above, but the trail was blocked off to stop wanderers from getting close to the cliff edge.

Chloé's plan sucked.

Marinette's shoes and socks were soaked because of it, even worse than when it had just been sweat. Instead of sitting on the beach in the sun any longer, she made her way through the shallow water, walking to the other side of the cliff that obscured those sitting on the sand from seeing her any more.

Then, she used her bandalore to make it up onto the cliff above.

It was over in a matter of seconds.

She used the method of travel to her advantage, making it through the trees until she was able to see to fence that was between the woods and the car park.

The woman was still there, searching through her bag.

Marinette wasn't a good actor.

But, when she ran up to the woman, waving an arm above her head as she exclaimed that she needed help, it seemed that she didn't need to have good skills to get her to believe her.

Marinette didn't even have tears in her eyes.

And yet, the woman readily jumped over the restricted fence, not even suggesting that they should get someone else to help them, too. Marinette was babbling, trying to say that her sister had fallen and hurt her leg, that she wasn't strong enough to carry her—

They'd barely made it until the edge was in view when Chloé leapt, moving with a speed she had refused to do earlier when they'd made their way to the beach, barrelling into the woman and knocking them both to the floor.

Chloé had her hands around the woman's neck, squeezing tightly. The demon was wheezing, scratching at Chloé with enough strength to start to rip the skin from her hands, blood pouring out and staining the both of them in the process, and then—

There was a sickening crunch as the woman's neck was snapped, life temporarily leaving her for long enough for Chloé to eliminate the hearts.

"_One_?" Chloé laughed loudly, gleeful.

Even Marinette was surprised at that. "Really?"

While the body was good—disintegrated, blown away with the wind—that didn't get rid of the blood that was all up Chloé's arms, covering her outfit, and splattered across the ground. It was far away enough from the fence, but the trees would provide cover from the rain for a while, meaning the splattered blood on the rocks close by were bound to stay for a while.

"...Your clothes are in the car," Marinette said.

She was already starting to accept her fate of having to walk back to collect them.

When Chloé smiled, the blood on her face really completed the picture.

"I'd really fit the theme of virgin sacrifice right now, wouldn't I?" Chloé quipped, striking a pose.

The wounds on her arms had started to heal, almost completely erased, but it didn't get rid of the still wet blood on her.

Marinette laughed. "I don't think so."

Chloé brushed her hair over her shoulder, jerking her head down with enough force for the sunglasses on her head to fall down. If they hadn't been lopsided, it would've been perfect.

"Lame," Chloé replied.

"Me?" Marinette put a hand over her heart. "I just got you a perfectly good kill, did I not?"

"You used your good girl appearance for a good use, yes," Chloé mused. "But you didn't really do anything, did you?"

She put her hands on her hips. "I won't get new clothes for you."

"I'll jump off the edge, then," Chloé said, gesturing to where it was visible behind her. "I'm sure I'll make a few kids scream when they see all this blood."

"You're making this sound like it's _my _fault—"

Marinette was interrupted by Chloé exclaiming, "What the fuck?"

Following where Chloé was pointing to, Marinette recoiled in shock, lost for words. The blood that had soaked into the soil had disappeared, no moist or dark patch remaining—but that wasn't what was calling for their attention.

The few rocks that had been splattered with blood had changed; or, rather, the blood was slipping off of it, being sucked down into the ground—

It wasn't _natural_.

As a response, Marinette held her bandalore in her hand, taking another step back.

"What the fuck?" Chloé reiterated, baffled. "That's not—that doesn't _happen_."

It wasn't reassuring to know that Chloé was as lost as her.

"No?" she queried.

"I've never heard of... anything like this," Chloé responded, crouching down and pressing her fingers into the soil where the blood had disappeared to.

When she pulled her hand back, there wasn't a visible difference from the already bloodied skin.

It wasn't her smartest move.

"It's gone," Chloé stated.

"Definitely not a demon thing?" Marinette asked, just to make sure. "Not for freaky reincarnation or anything, right?"

Chloé shook her head.

Then, to make matters worse, something seemed to seep out from the ground.

It was tiny, barely there, but a few dots of bright orange caught their attention. Chloé didn't move away from where she was crouched, still inspecting the area, but the dots were turning into beads, steadily oozing out and becoming bigger.

It was strange to see.

"What—what is that?" Marinette questioned, astounded that they'd seen something so weird in the first place.

She'd never learned anything about that in her short stint at school.

"No idea," Chloé replied, reaching out a bloodied hand and brushing her fingers across the surface of some of the liquid.

And as she fell onto her backside, a loud shriek of pain escaping her as she clutched her arm to her chest before scrambling backwards, Marinette didn't know how to react other than to ask, "Are you okay?"

But she didn't need to ask that to know the answer.

Chloé's fingers were missing.

Blood was pouring down her arm, the flesh and bone were visible where her fingers had violently disappeared, the exposed wound gaping and exposed to the air, and the look of pure terror on Chloé's face wasn't one that she'd seen before.

Marinette reacted by skidding down beside Chloé, wide-eyed and revolted.

The distinct smell of burning filled the air.

"Oh, fuck," Chloé cursed, slowly turning the arm she'd been cradling, inspecting the damage. She took in a sharp breath through her teeth. "This fucking hurts."

But there wasn't—

It was becoming a puddle by that point; angry-coloured, slowly spreading, and looking entirely out of place. There was no sign of Chloé's missing fingers and skin, no sign that it was capable of burning—

But it was fucking lava, wasn't it?

Her heart was pounding widely.

"You—" Marinette's voice cracked. "You heal, right?"

Chloé's quivered with pain. "Yeah."

"Even this?"

"_Yes_," Chloé snapped back.

There wasn't any heat coming from it. It wasn't even a _volcano—_it was the cliff by a beach, not a place that had a chance of lava pouring out of the top of it. And yet, the molten rock continued to pool, steadily growing larger, not setting the fallen leaves that it touched on fire.

It made no _sense_.

"Marinette," Chloé said, using her good arm to reach out and grab her shoulder to help herself up. "We need to leave."

"What—"

"_That_," Chloé started, gesturing with her head to the heatless puddle beside them, "is the sign that we fucked up, okay? We need to go."

And as she got up to her feet, Chloé's grip on her shoulder was hard enough to bruise. "I don't understand—"

"That's a fucking demon, Marinette," she hissed. "And it's not going to go back to sleep until it eats someone like me."

Marinette's voice was higher-pitched due to her confusion. "I'm sorry, _what_?"

"What do you fucking associate lava with?" Chloé snapped, steering them both towards the fence. "Hell! It's not—they're not supposed to be here_—_"

"Hell?" Marinette questioned. "I'm thinking this isn't a fucking volcano, but now there's—there's heatless lava, and you're trying to tell me it's like _you_?"

"Shut the fuck up, will you?" Chloé hissed. "I need you to get me some clothes, even just a jacket, as quickly as you can, yeah?"

Incredulous, she asked, "You're worried about that right now?"

"There's cameras in the car park, you fucking idiot," Chloé retorted, gesturing to the trees with her injured hand, causing her to wince. "I need to leave without alerting the police that we massacred someone."

"Chloé—"

And while pushing her away with enough strength to make Marinette stumble, Chloé demanded, "Get out."

She ran to the fence, jumping over it with ease before approaching where they'd left the car. Marinette fetched the keys from her backpack, opening the boot and knocking Chloé's bag over to the side, spilling out the contents and searching for the biggest article of clothing that could cover most of the blood on her.

She hoped that most stayed on the beach.

It felt far longer than it should've for her to run back and go over to the fence.

Marinette didn't have to go far to see Chloé standing with her back against a tree, flexing her newly returned fingers.

They were clean, unlike the rest of her arm.

She'd missed them growing, then.

It still seemed unreal that that could happen at all—then again, she had seen demons heal broken bones before in a matter of minutes, but it just hadn't ever been a severed body part. She couldn't imagine how it work look, let alone how it would feel—

"I got you a towel," Marinette announced, holding up her find.

Chloé snorted. "Really?"

"It was the biggest thing," she defended, tossing it at her. "Pretend you've been swimming or something, it'll be fine."

And as Chloé tucked it around herself, covering up most of the blood on her abdomen, but not the stains up her arms, Marinette leaned to the side, checking to see whether the lava was visible.

It wasn't.

"Are you sure about... that?" she asked, gesturing behind them.

"Absolutely," Chloé replied, tucking the towel into itself in an attempt to make it stay on. "It's just not—common, I guess? It's, like, the only version of suicide, in a way."

She frowned. "That makes no sense whatsoever."

"Yeah—"

But what Chloé was saying wasn't finished.

Instead, Marinette lost her breath in a strangled gasp, disorientated with her body screaming in pain—overwhelmingly assaulting her sense, the throbbing in her torso prominent and demanding—and as she tried to understand what had happened, she realised that she was crumpled on the floor, the tree she'd collided with still pressing into her back.

Chloé had pushed her to the side.

She tried to get her breath back, but it resulted in a stabbing sensation in her chest; a clear protest, a sign that something was wrong—

Marinette took in quick, sharp breaths, the resulting pain causing tears to well up in her eyes, but she was able to make out what was happening in front of her.

There was blood over Chloé's face.

It was fresh.

Marinette fumbled for her pocket, jostling her chest in the process and causing her to hiss in pain, and her hands were shaking as she struggled to get her bandalore.

Chloé wasn't—

Chloé wasn't _moving_.

A man had blood dripping from his hands, gore covering his skin as he trailed his hand down Chloé's chest, pushing with enough force to break Chloé's ribs with barely any effort, damaging and making his way through the bone and organs—

And as she got the loop of the bandalore onto her finger, she noticed the bloodied sockets of Chloé's eyes.

The man wasn't paying her any attention—but why would he, when she was only a human in his eyes?

Chloé's eyes had been crushed.

Marinette's breathing was laboured, the stabbing pain causing her to feel dizzy, vision blurry, but she was able to see as Chloé's body faded to ash.

And she—

She just watched.

The man spat on the floor.

Chloé was supposed to be strong, wasn't she?

That was the thing she'd been proudest of.

And yet—

Marinette's stomach heaved.

With a painful jerk of her arm, tossing out the weapon for it to wrap around the man's legs, Marinette felt almost numb. The throbbing in her chest was even worse when she staggered up to her feet, using the tree for support, only to find out that her other wrist wasn't in good condition either.

She hadn't even thought it wouldn't connect.

Because when she looked up, panting and trying to stand upright by leaning her shoulder against the tree, the bandalore wasn't wrapped around his legs; rather, he was inspecting it in his hand, squeezing it tight enough for his knuckles to turn white.

When it didn't break, he looked up at her with a smile that was all teeth. "How did someone like you get ahold of this?"

Her hands felt cold.

And when he tugged it, causing her to stumble forward, agony coursed through her as her body hit the floor, dirt touching her face.

Marinette didn't let go of it.

It hurt, it _hurt—_

But she wasn't going to be able to fight him, was she?

Chloé never struggled, not any more. She was adept at fighting, able to break another demon's hold on her through her strength alone, breaking their arms with little to no effort—

Chloé hadn't stood a chance.

Her blade was in her backpack, still attached to her back, but there was no chance of her being able to get it off, let alone wield it in her current condition.

The bandalore wasn't efficient for killing.

There was pressure against the back of her head, pressing her face further into the ground. And as she struggled to breath, even worse than the pain, the dirt went up her nose, causing her to wheeze and cough.

He was toying with her, wasn't he?

As if to prove her point, he pressed harder on her head and asked, "Where did you get this?"

He was quick, his reflexes fast enough to catch the bandalore in action, and had enough strength to best Chloé—

But they'd never been faster than her before, had they?

It was as he slammed his foot down with enough force her a searing pain to appear in her nose, blood spurting from her nostrils, that she tugged weakly with her hand, a strangled noise escaping her at the burning sensation it caused.

She cried out in pain as she threw her hand back, knowing that it would catch onto something and tug her, only hoping that it was far enough for her to try and gain some distance.

Breathing was even harder when blood was flowing down her throat.

Then, there was the wind added as she was pulled away by the bandalore, landing with a sob as her body violently protested the action. Her dominant wasn't broken; it burned with every movement, but she moved her hand again, leaving her messed up arm to dangle by her side, pulsing pain every second.

The bandalore was always safe. She never flew into walls, never collided with trees—but it was a different story when she was already injured.

Her vision was hazy, consciousness teetering on the edge, and Marinette was so close to adding vomiting to the mix.

It was a last-ditch effort to go in the direction of the lava.

Demons killed each other all the time.

And maybe, just maybe, the presence of another would mean that his attention would be averted. Out of the two of them, a demon would always be perceived as a bigger threat than her, wouldn't it?

Stumbling and using a tree for support, Marinette turned around as quickly as she could after deliriously confirming where she was, able to make out him coming through the trees.

Rather than continuing to flee, she aimed the bandalore above him, almost choking on blood as she swung in the air, on the way to collide with him.

Of course, he moved.

She was on the floor again, dirt sticking to her blood-soaked face, and she coughed weakly as she turned onto her back, staring up at the hazy outline of the man coming to stand in front of her.

He sounded amused as he asked, "Is that all?"

Marinette's laughter sounded wet.

Then, she coughed, trying to get the fluid out of her throat, but all that came out was a strangled sound.

With the tiniest jerk of her hand, the bandalore came back to her hand neatly.

Instead of focusing on the other demon, he stomped on her foot.

Marinette _screamed—_

He ground his heel in.

The pain was blinding, barely comparable to the throbbing on her ribs, and she wasn't sure whether it was possible to be in any more pain than that.

She tried to curl into herself, to try and stop the pain in some way, but it jostled her ribs, arm protesting from being moved at all, and it _hurt—_

"I asked you a question," the man repeated, crouching down and placing his hand around her neck. He squeezed, but not tight enough to cause any further discomfort. "Where did you get this weapon?"

She spat blood onto his face.

And then, he started to strangle her.

It was over as soon as it had started; a warning, a threat to make her cooperate, but the screaming pain in her body wasn't calming down at all.

But he—

He wasn't holding down her arms.

"_Where_?" he demanded.

"It's—" Marinette choked out, coughing, trying to clear her throat.

His grip didn't tighten.

Hers did.

The bandalore wrapped around his torso, looping around his arms and keeping them against his chest, and in a matter of seconds she jerked her hand to send him flying backwards—

It was even harder to breathe as she noticed the searing pain in her neck.

She coughed, but it only made it worse. And as she struggled and tried to put a hand to neck to see what was wrong, all she could feel with her cold fingers was fresh blood.

Her breathing was laboured.

But she couldn't concentrate, couldn't make her eyes focus. The dark spots in her vision were becoming all-consuming, causing everything else to fade out as her head fell back against the hard floor—

She'd only just been able to make out the angry red of the lava past the trees.

There was the smell of burning, strangled noises that weren't coming from her, but she was too tired to lift herself up—

Marinette closed her eyes.

The pain didn't stop.


	3. 03

**AN: **Instead of posting a 100k chapter, have this instead. I'm predicting that the other half will match up to this in wordcount when it's finished. Reminder that Marinette's messed up, there's going to be a lot of violence and murder, and that the mature rating is solely because of that. There won't be any sexual content in this whatsoever.

_Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Chat Noir © Thomas Astruc_

"That is not your colour," Chloé chastised, slapping the concealer out of her hand and causing it to clatter to the floor. "You don't want to look even blotchier than you already are, do you?"

Marinette stared at her blankly.

"You don't need orange to add to the rest," Chloé said, searching through her make-up collection for the newly purchased ones that Marinette hadn't been able to spot, somehow. "If you're determined to do this, you need to _not_ look abused."

With a sigh, Marinette sat down on the stool by the vanity mirror, giving in without much of a fuss.

When she'd thought about where Chloé lived, she never expected it to be modern, mainly black-and-white other than a few pops of colour in the form of decorations or pillows, and certainly not as expensive-looking as it really was. Chloé even had a vanity table in her large bathroom, complete with lights to turn on above it to make it easier to see.

It was easily the most luxurious place she'd even been in.

And she was still welcome, even after peeing the bed from being unconscious.

Chloé started applying the make-up to her without complaint.

Marinette stared in the mirror as the bruises slowly started to be covered, the make-up blending in with her skin tone—which was definitely more pale than Chloé, even after time in the sun—and her newly gained freckles disappeared under the coverage.

It needed to look even, after all.

Chloé was better at covering the bruises on her throat than when she'd tried to do it herself before.

The bruises were still there, her arm and leg still felt tender, but a month had passed and her bones had healed.

Marinette had never gone to the hospital.

Her body shouldn't have—

She wasn't going to question it.

They hadn't talked about it much.

When she'd come to, she'd been weak and in an unfamiliar room, and Chloé looked almost crazed as she put a damp cloth on Marinette's forehead. Nothing had really made sense, but the pain was intense, and her efforts to stay conscious didn't last long.

"It's like something is missing," Chloé admitted, using her hands to bend a spoon after a brief moment of struggle. "This—this is something I could do over a decade ago. And now..."

Chloé had said her worst nightmare was being weak, didn't she?

Marinette's eyes felt hot.

The two of them barely had any medical knowledge. She awoke a few times to Chloé reading something on her phone, then telling her about it to ask whether it was correct, and that was combined with a lot of painkillers being shoved down her throat.

Her mangled foot wasn't supposed to only hurt a little bit when she put pressure on it—it should've been healing in the wrong position, painful and causing her to feel agony whenever it was knocked.

"No bump," Chloé confirmed after putting make-up on her nose. "If anything, you look like you've just discovered make-up—and mastered it, of course."

She swallowed. "Thanks."

"You could always drop out," Chloé replied. "Being a full-time hunter sounds like a riot."

"I can't."

"Right." Chloé snorted. "Because being at school is _so_ important. I could always just get someone to fake your grades for you."

She made a disapproving noise. "Your demonic connections are not needed."

"Because you're a good little girl, right?" Chloé retorted with a laugh. "I haven't seen you do a single bit of homework, bitch."

"It's at _home_, hence the name," she shot back. "And I've been cooped up here."

"You live here now," Chloé told her.

She scowled. "I don't."

"You owe me," Chloé replied, running her hands through Marinette's hair with more force than necessary, tugging at the ends. "It's only fair if your life belongs to me now, right?"

Marinette couldn't look her in the eyes. "Right."

Her hair was in a complicated braid that she didn't even know how to start, bruises covered up and not visible across her pale skin, and probably looked more put together than she ever had at school before.

The problem of the uniform was solved by her getting Chloé to drop her off near Fu's. She didn't give the exact location, and Chloé didn't care to find out any more, simply saying bye before she was off to work.

It was a good sign that the key still worked on the front door.

Fu wasn't there.

Marinette went into her room, changing into a uniform that she'd washed before she'd disappeared for the holiday, making sure her blade wasn't visible beneath it. The backpack she'd used the previous year was safe and in good condition, thankfully, unlike the one that she'd taken to the beach—

Her headphones fit comfortably on her head.

The new phone Chloé had gotten for her had more storage for music, but unlike her last one, it had a contract that she reluctantly accepted. Marinette had given Chloé one of the wallets filled with money for the time being, saying she'd give her some more when she was capable of hunting properly without her injuries flaring up.

Chloé had just waved her hand dismissively. "Whatever."

But it wasn't whatever—

Half a year ago, she wouldn't have trusted Chloé with her life.

They'd done just that without her even realising. Chloé didn't remember it, but Marinette—

Marinette couldn't forget about it.

Chloé was closed off, refusing to bring it up. She was stubborn about trying to make jokes about it, insisting that Marinette stay with her to work off her life-debt—as she was starting to call it—but her smile wasn't reaching her eyes.

Because of her, Chloé's worst fear had happened.

She couldn't even bend a spoon without putting effort into it.

And that was telling, wasn't it? The Chloé she knew could pulverise a man's chest without any problems.

When she got to school, there were a few groups of students loitering by the entrance, a clear indication that the bell hadn't gone yet, so she passed the time like she used to, sitting on a free seat and listening to music.

The first ones to approach her were Alya and Nino.

It was when Alya was in front of her that she looked up and realised that Alya's happy expression—the smile that reached her eyes—and the bounce in her step as she walked closer was solely meant for her.

That was still had to come to terms with.

"Marinette!" Alya greeted, louder than necessary. "I feel like I haven't seen you in _forever_. Did you go on holiday or something? I tried to text you, but—"

Putting her headphones around her neck, Marinette interrupted her with, "Phone broke."

"Oh." Alya's brow furrowed. "That sucks. How was your summer?"

"Hey, Marinette," Nino said with a little wave before putting his hands in his pocket. "How are you?"

"Fine," she replied. Then, after realising that she was probably coming across rude, she extended the question in return. "You?"

"Eh." Nino shrugged his shoulders. "I left my homework until the last minute, so that kind of sucked. Alya wouldn't even let me copy her because she's _lame_."

Alya cleared her throat. "She is right here."

Nino didn't look at her. "Do you hear the wind, Marinette?"

It was childish—emphasised more by Alya's huff as she crossed her arms—but there wasn't any real heat between them, was there? Nino was grinning, they were still standing beside each other, but Marinette wasn't the best at social cues.

"I haven't done half of my homework," she blurted out instead of answering that.

Nino blinked. "Want to copy mine?"

The offer surprised her. "Are you... sure?"

"Yeah, dude," he confirmed, already slipping one arm out of his backpack, opening up the zip and rummaging through the contents. "Which do you need?"

The answers were copied quickly, with Alya correcting a few of them that were wrong, and it was an experience she'd never really had before. They'd discussed homework during lunch a few times, but she'd never been helped as such—

"It's fine," Alya dismissed when Nino pointed out she was being far too cooperative for Marinette, but not him. "I copied off her who knows how many times—so, it's fair, right?"

"She's copying _me_," Nino interrupted.

Alya snorted. "We're basically the same person at this point."

After the bell rang and they were sat in the classroom, that was when Adrien rushed into the room, cheeks tinged pink from exertion as he came through, visibly breathing heavily.

"I forgot my bag," he lamented to Nino when he sat down. "I can't believe I'm such an _idiot_."

She could believe it.

It was when they were allowed to pick their seats in the first class—with the agreement that the teacher would separate anyone if they were too rowdy—that Adrien took the seat beside her. Alya and Nino were a few desks away, too far to talk to, but they did wave at her when she looked over.

"Hey," Adrien started quietly. "I was worried about you."

_Worried_?

Right—she'd disappeared to the lot of them.

"My phone broke," she reiterated.

There was a moment of silence between them—both unsure on how to respond—before he asked just as softly, "Have you gotten a new one yet?"

"Yeah," she confirmed.

"Okay," he said. "Can I have your number again?"

It was easy as that.

The injuries were hidden underneath make-up, but by the third class, her wrist was hurting from writing down notes. Marinette slowed down, only jotting down the essential pieces of information, and she handed in most of her homework.

When it came time to the one teacher that she hadn't done it for, she didn't get detention.

A lot of the class hadn't done it.

It was one of the things of school that was still absurd to her—that they'd get away without punishment when the guidelines were set. Fu had pointed her to what books she needed to get to get up-to-date on schooling before joining to be beside Adrien. The research she'd done made it seem clear and simple.

To do what was required and blend in with others.

And yet, that wasn't what had happened at all, was it?

Adrien and his friends beckoning her over to eat lunch together was a clear example of that.

But it was a good development; she was closer to him, in what could be deemed his inner circle, and had access to where he was going without resorting to snooping.

Plus, he didn't complain when she installed the tracking application on his phone again.

He was aware of it by then, promising to keep his phone alive to the best of his ability.

As before, Alya and Nino sectioned off first to go home.

Adrien brought up the subject of her summer vacation. "How was it with your—your friend?"

It took her a while to remember that he knew about Chloé.

"Fine," she told him, holding onto the strap of her backpack with one hand. "Not very eventful."

"A road trip," he started, "with you and a demon."

She wetted her lips. "Yes."

"What did—what did you do?" Adrien asked, a bit hesitant.

"Visited a few towns, tried some food and went to beaches," Marinette elaborated. "The usual, I guess. That's what I've seen in films."

There was no reason to explain anyone else, was there?

Adrien didn't need to know that she should be dead.

It was hard to fully understand, and she was doubting every moment of it. Yet, she was still breathing twenty-four hours later, surely drenched in her own blood when Chloé regenerated and took her back to the car.

And for how much it didn't make sense, Marinette had to accept that the rest of her life didn't either.

The bandalore accepted her, but it had killed Kim within seconds from his decision of wielding it.

"First trip?" he questioned.

"There's a lot of things I still haven't done," she pointed out. "Like... video games. I was really bad at that."

"You weren't _that_ bad." And from the way he smiled, it sounded like a lie to him, too. "Do you think you'll come again? If you can leave before dinner?"

The answer to that was interrupted by the teacher coming.

Adrien didn't pester her.

-x-

A routine came back easily.

Although she lived on the other side of the city now, she still walked Adrien home and made sure he was safe before leaving, and he continued to text her updates, warning if he was going out anywhere.

And if she got one, she left the home, using her bandalore to get somewhere high and observe, putting his well-being above her own.

There was the small detail of dealing with other demons.

As soon as Chloé had gone back to work, had met up with others that her kind, they had the first break in within the second week.

Marinette stabbed one heart, holding them down with the bandalore, and Chloé had to use more effort than before to pulverise the remaining hearts.

The amount of power Chloé gained was underwhelming.

She hadn't been kidding when she'd told her that it would take _years_ to recover what she'd lost—

An uncomfortable feeling became apparent in her stomach from that.

It was her fault, all because of her that—

Chloé was the reason she was alive.

Marinette might have been bad at interactions, at getting close to people and expressing her feelings, but she knew when she had to do something.

And so, it was with that thought that she followed the tips Chloé gave her as soon as her injuries had recovered and stopped giving her trouble after walking for too long or writing.

Marinette considered buying a fabric mask to cover her face.

It seemed like a good idea to try and hide her identity a bit while searching for demons. There was one that knew her face, wasn't there? The low-level that they'd killed had surely regenerated—not consumed by the lava—and witnessed Marinette's body bleeding out, leaving without a care.

The trip had been hours away, but demons—demons could change their appearance, the age differences making them hard to recognise.

She decided against it.

Rather than being exhausted the next day from being out at night, she stuck to the weekends. It was the last year at that school, and it wouldn't benefit her to suddenly become a problem child that the teachers scolded for not doing her homework.

As much progress she'd made with Adrien before—with him willingly talking to her, seeking her out—that seemed stunted, barely-there over the following weeks.

He didn't ignore her. He spoke to her whenever they were sat together or walking home, but he wasn't sending curious texts, asking what she was doing during the evening.

And when she'd responded to his messages saying he was going out, he didn't reply back with an abundance of emojis.

It was a curious thing.

"Are you—okay?" Marinette asked, interrupting his long-winded rant about the problems of the current game that he was playing.

He'd been filling her in on it for the past few days, trying to coax her into downloading it.

She had to break it to him that her laptop was cheap and wasn't built to run such games.

"Me?" Adrien blinked. "Yeah, why?"

"No, I—" She breathed out audibly. "You're being... weird."

He frowned. "You could've just said that you weren't interested in listening."

"That's not—that's not it," she said. "You're... being different with me."

"Well, yeah," he replied, reaching up and running a hand through his hair, causing it to look even more unkempt. "This—this is what you wanted, isn't it? You're protecting me, I get it, but I'm not going to bother you any more than when you actually want to be with me."

Her brow furrowed. "Where'd you get that idea?"

"You didn't text _at all_?" Adrien pointed out. "And even if your phone broke, you could've messaged me somewhere—pretty sure you know all my accounts."

She swallowed. "I did check them."

He paused, no longer walking as he turned towards her. They made eye contact, not saying anything at first, and she couldn't quite decipher his expression as he asked, "But you—you didn't say anything?"

It had never been in the plan to hurt him.

The whole thing was a step backwards from where she was—even if it had never been planned in the first place.

When she was stuck on what to say, she choose to go for the truth. "I was injured, so I couldn't check on you personally."

His voice was higher-pitched as he enquired, "Injured?"

She tapped her nose. "Make-up."

Adrien visibly struggled for words. "What happened?"

"Got caught up in a fight," she lamely explained. "Nothing too serious."

It sounded hollow to her own ears.

She shouldn't even be there.

Adrien didn't relax at that. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," she told him.

Because she was, wasn't she? She was breathing, walking without a limp, and she'd successfully taken down a demon yesterday after texting her location to Chloé to get her to come and take the final blow.

She'd done it without breathing heavily.

He wetted his lips. "You want me to bug you?"

"Yes," she simply replied. "Unless you don't want to."

"I want to," he blurted. "But I—I feel like it might be annoying? I don't want to message while you're, like, stalking the streets or something. If I was the reason for you getting hurt, I don't think I could deal with that."

She looked him in the eyes. "I'd get hurt for you."

Adrien averted his gaze, scuffing his shoe against the ground. "I don't want that."

That was the basis for their relationship, wasn't it?

"I put my phone on silent or leave it somewhere safe," Marinette admitted quietly. "I'm not making that rookie mistake any more."

He let out an incredulous noise. "Rookie?"

"It went off when I was following someone before," she confessed.

"...Right."

"It was a lot more dramatic than it sounds," she assured him. "It was when I first got the phone, too. I wasn't exactly sure what I was doing with it."

He asked, "And you're good now?"

She shrugged.

"If you..." Adrien started, letting out a breath to stall. "If you ever need help with anything, you can ask me—for the things you're out of touch with. Not—not demony things."

She repeated in disbelief, "Demony things."

"Fine, _demonic_," he muttered. "Better?"

Marinette laughed.

And Adrien—

He smiled right back at her.

Her chest felt warm.

-x-

Chloé could bend a spoon.

She then chucked it at the wall with a noise of annoyance.

Marinette kept her mouth shut.

The sudden shift of her living situation was something to get used to. With Fu, she'd purchased her food at stores or restaurants nearby with stolen money, but it was different when living with Chloé.

For one, she never cooked.

So, they ordered in for dinner almost daily. It was a toss of a coin to see which one of them would pay.

Marinette's wallet collection started to grow again after she'd gone to fetch most of her belongings from Fu's, though there was no love lost there.

Fu told her that he room was open if she needed it, but didn't ask any more questions.

She hadn't expected him to.

He was—

It was all out of a feeling of debt for Aloys that she'd been taken in at all. Marinette had been a sense of duty, not someone for him to consider more than a passing interest, someone to briefly train, but not invest in.

And that was fine.

She didn't need him.

Fu was old, refused to kill demons unless it was strictly necessary to avoid the effort, and he didn't care for anyone more than himself.

She wondered whether that was her future.

All she was there for was Adrien. She'd stayed for him, altered her life and studied to be able to enter school, rather than living illegally and hiding from authorities—

He deserved it, more than anyone.

Adrien was pure, literally.

That was something to be protected.

It seemed to be easy to keep the two parts of her life separate. Chloé was busy with her day-to-day life working, and they only really saw each other at home (unless they ventured out together), and Marinette hadn't had to refuse any invitations to spend time with Adrien and his friends.

True to his word, Adrien contacted her more.

He decided that he needed to be her teacher for all things to do with teenagers—as they were both fifteen, after all—and keep her up-to-date with the current goings-on with the world, meaning he kept sending her funny pictures or videos in the late hours of the evening, when he was supposed to be asleep.

It was no wonder that he had dark circles under his eyes.

"I'm bad at managing my time," he said in defence when Nino pointed out how dreadful he looked that day. "I wanted to finish reading the comic, right? So, I binged it. I regret everything because the ending _sucked_."

Nino snorted. "Worse than the last?"

"Well, nothing's that bad," Adrien muttered. "But this one started out really promising!"

Nino patted Adrien's shoulder in a show of sympathy.

Alya just muttered, "Nerd."

Instead of asking questions, Marinette wisely kept out of it.

Adrien brought it up again later on their way home. "Do you like any comics?"

"Not really," she replied, jacket tied around her waist. Although the weather was steadily getting worse with autumn, the heat was still there in the late afternoon at times. "I've read a few novels lately, but they were mostly—well... yeah."

He gasped. "_Marinette_."

"That's all Chloé has in her apartment."

"Chloé?" he questioned. "Is that—"

She didn't avoid the subject. "Demon? Yeah."

His voice was so small when he asked, "They have—homes?"

It hadn't occurred to her that he was still treating demons like they were completely separate entities—that he hadn't fully come to terms with what they meant or where they could be.

They hadn't spoken about them much.

"Same as everyone else," she informed him. "To blend in, you know? It's easier to get away with things when you don't stand out."

Adrien wasn't walking as fast. "It's... hard to understand."

There wasn't anything more she wanted than to keep him safe. Adrien was the reason for her being there; safe, breathing, and feeling more at home than she had in years.

"You won't have to if I do my job," she whispered.

He winced. "Don't say that."

"Which part?" she queried, tilting her head, some strands of hair falling in her face. "Treating you like a kid or it being my job?"

Adrien shot her a glare. "Both. I'm older than you."

She shrugged. "My birth certificate is faked, so who knows?"

"You can't—you can't just be so blasé about that," he spluttered, aghast. "What if someone _hears_?"

"It'll weed out if anyone understands me," she responded. "Makes my job easier, right?"

He was looking at her in disbelief. "You're mad."

Marinette smiled. "Maybe."

"Truly," he insisted. "And don't think I'll forget about you reading smutty novels."

"I can give you some recommendation, if you'd like," she offered, still smiling softly. "You seem to like torturing yourself with bad things."

He grimaced. "I'll stick with only reading stuff with pictures, but thanks."

"Suit yourself," Marinette said. "I still have another shelf to get through."

"You need better reading material," he insisted. "Something... actually fun."

And that was how she ended up with a comic being shoved into her bag the next day. Adrien hadn't explained further than saying that it was his favourite and reaching down to nab her bag without resistance.

"Thanks?" It came out sounding like a question. "I'm not sure I'll have time over the weekend."

Adrien shrugged. "You can keep it until you read it, then."

She still had to point out, "It might get damaged."

"I'll buy another," he responded without missing a beat. "It's not available online unless you go on some unsafe websites, so this is the better alternative."

Peering into her bag to see the front cover, she asked him, "Why do you want me to read this so badly?"

"Exposure," Adrien declared, tapping his temple. "I have knowledge that I'm going to share with you—soon, you'll be making pop culture quips."

She blinked. "I don't think so."

"We'll get there," he assured her, reaching out to put a hand on her shoulder.

Marinette stared at his hand, confused.

He removed it slowly.

The comic was forgotten on the desk in her bedroom after the first weekend.

While Adrien had expressed his worry that his message would cause unsavoury consequences for her when she was outside, she did tell him the next time she was sitting around, waiting for her target to appear. It helped when she knew their rough routine; sometimes, it paid off for it to be someone close to Chloé, enough so that Marinette was told their work schedule.

Adrien asked her if she was going to kill someone.

She didn't need to answer that.

It was startling how desensitised she was to it all; the blood that sprayed onto her face didn't cause her to feel queasy, neither did the choked gasps that escaped the demon before they turned into ash, the murderous threats and insults fading to an echo in her head.

She washed her hands in the sink.

Her dark-coloured clothing was a lost cause, but Chloé owned a washing machine and dryer that she could use without hassle.

Chloé had more than enough experience at getting blood out.

"Fuck off, I'm not telling you shit," Chloé all but snarled.

Marinette huffed. "What's the point of keeping it a secret?"

"What's the point of you _knowing_ my age?" Chloé countered, eyes narrowed. "You're literally a baby. You don't need such knowledge."

"Give me an average age for demons, then," she proposed. "Fill me in on some more secrets."

"Be fucking specific," was the response she got. "What do you want to know? I'm not going to just pull shit out of my ass for you."

From the use of language, Marinette remarked, "You're in a great mood today."

Chloé held the remote in her hand as though she was about to throw it. "I ran into some... assholes today."

"Oh." Marinette didn't press for more information on that. "What about... I don't know—"

The remote passed by her head, landing on the floor, but not shattered. "Don't mumble at me."

"I wasn't mumbling," Marinette snapped. "I was thinking aloud."

"Think in your head," Chloé retorted.

Picking up the remote, she checked for any damages before tossing it on the cushion beside Chloé. "How old can you guys get?"

"Hundreds of years," Chloé answered, sagging back against the cushion and putting her feet up on the coffee table. Unlike the smart-looking clothes she wore to work, Chloé had changed into something more skimpy, more how Marinette was used to seeing her. "But we usually get tired by then, I guess? The oldest I've heard about is, like, four hundred. If anyone's any older, they're not advertising it."

She queried, "Tired?"

"Do you want to live forever?" Chloé asked, eyebrows raised. "It's fucking boring, Marinette. I can't go rob or bank or some shit without making myself a target and getting fucking slaughtered, so I'm stuck in this boring ass life."

Curious, Marinette questioned, "Why can't you just cause havoc? I've never really—understood that."

"Angels, dude," Chloé explained. "They're fucking hard to kill, right? I don't want to lose all my power because I wanted a bit of cash—well, not like it would be such a fucking loss right now."

Marinette didn't say anything to comfort her.

She was awkward, didn't know how to talk about feelings without coming across stunted and inexperience, and Chloé was just as likely to avoid the subject.

"I know you said that Hell's not... liveable any more," she started slowly. "But is—is Heaven real?"

"If you want to call it that, sure," Chloé said. "They just—like, appear? And no one can even fucking have a conversation with them, so it's not like I've got any more information than that. Angels are just a pain in the ass, for real. The day I meet one, I'm absolutely going to die."

That was as much as Fu could tell her, too.

The things she knew about angels were even more limited than demons.

"Can't talk because they just—attack you?"

Chloé snorted. "Why talk to your prey, right?"

All she could really say to that was, "Weird."

"Doesn't seem that far out there," Chloé replied, sounding utterly bored. "Stranger things have happened, right? Like you _living _just to piss in my bed."

"I was unconscious!" Marinette exclaimed. "It's not like I did it on purpose."

Chloé waved a hand dismissively. "Yeah, I'm sure. I'm going to shank you in your sleep. Let's see if you live through that, no?"

Marinette opened her mouth to reply—to shoot down that threat—but she paused.

It had some merit to it, didn't it?

She got up, going towards the kitchen that was untouched, other than the mugs sitting in the sink that hadn't quite made it to the dishwasher yet, and opened up the drawer where the knives were stored.

The one she picked was medium-sized.

She stood there, debating where the least stupid area to cut would be.

"What are you doing, idiot?" Chloé called out, sounding as though she was still across the room, sprawled lazily on the sofa.

"I'm considering cutting myself," she bluntly replied. "Where's the best area, do you think? I don't want somewhere... deadly."

It was a feat to make Chloé sound surprised. "...What?"

"I _healed_," Marinette insisted, whirling around and gesturing to herself with the knife. "I—that shouldn't have been possible, right? I should still have, like, broken bones or some shit, but—"

"Punch a wall or something, then," Chloé replied. "Your bruises didn't heal quick."

She paused at that. "Eh?"

"I didn't have to reset your bones or anything," Chloé told her, sitting up properly before standing up, closing the distance between them. "Your body realigned itself without my interference, but you had black eyes and bruises everywhere."

"So you _don't_ think I should cut myself?"

"I mean, go ahead if you want to." Chloé pushed her hair over her shoulder. "But maybe it's like—I don't know, the major injuries that get healed? Because I'm pretty sure you're not going to regrow any fingers if you cut them off or some shit."

She choked out a laugh. "I meant making a little cut, not severing a body part."

"Eh, same thing to me," Chloé dismissed. "Go big or go home—but big for _you_. I don't really have a grasp on human injuries."

"My wrist only just stopped hurting." She looked down at her hand. "I don't really want to break it again."

"Stop being a bitch," Chloé chastised. "You're not going to get anything done if you're being such a pussy."

She squinted. "Are you trying to goad me into hurting myself?"

"I can do it for you, if you want," was the response she got. "Takes the stress off of you, yeah? And I get a bit of fun out of it."

Marinette winced. "...I'm going to reject that, but thanks."

"Ungrateful," Chloé accused, taking the knife from her hands and tossing it in the air.

Instead of being caught, it fell to the floor.

Marinette's laughter was loud.

-x-

Alya was still persistent on being her friend.

The lunches together weren't enough to satisfy her, apparently.

"We're going to the cinema Friday," Alya said as her greeting. "You in?"

Marinette made the mistake of replying, "I've never gone before."

It was loud there.

The seats were close together, not a lot of leg room in front of them, and it was packed with people, barely any seats empty as the trailers played. The volume was loud, booming from the speakers, and it was all very overwhelming.

She'd ended up sitting with Adrien on one side of her, Nino on the other.

Marinette had gotten a drink, opting not to get any food, but everyone else had purchased snacks that they had balancing on their laps and were happily digging into them.

Adrien nudged her with his elbow. And as she looked at him, he leaned closer to ask, "Want some?"

He was gesturing to the sweets he'd bought.

She shook her head.

But after the film started—still as loud as ever, the room so _dark—_Adrien did lean over to ask her again if she wanted any.

It felt like barely any time had passed, but she agreed to try one.

The taste was strange, but nice.

Adrien grinned.

When they went outside, it was a bit jarring due to the light coming in through the windows. The difference in lighting had her startled at first, but she was fine by the time they made it outside.

They were all waiting for their parents to pick them up, which meant Marinette stood there awkwardly when they text to say that the film was done, before she brought out her phone to pretend to do the same thing.

Instead, she text Adrien that she'd make sure that he got home fine.

She saw him look at it beside her.

He turned to her with a small smile, lifting his thumb up in approval.

Nino's car appeared first, Alya's coming a few minutes later, and Adrien was in the middle of telling her about a game that he wanted her to play when the vehicle meant for him pulled up on the curb.

It was his mother's car.

"I'll see you next week?" he asked, lifting his hands for a moment before stuffing them in his pocket. "Don't do—anything I would, I guess."

Marinette raised her eyebrows. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"Make good choices," he clarified with a laugh. "And text me that you're okay if you go out."

She swallowed. "I'll be fine."

"Still, I'd like to know," Adrien quietly responded. "You didn't tell me last time."

"You—"

"I should go," he interrupted, gesturing to his head to his mother's car. "I'll—yeah, bye."

She waved at him.

It was already late, so she went back to Chloé's home instead of staying out after making sure Adrien had gotten home safe. His bedroom light was on, he was replying to her texts and lamenting that he didn't know what to do to amuse himself, and it was doubtful that there would be any danger.

She left as his father's car pulled into the drive.

Chloé was drunk when she got home.

Well, trying to be.

It was made worse by the young face she had on. She looked even younger than Marinette at that moment.

Marinette couldn't hold back her laughter. "Really?"

Chloé took an exaggerated sip from her wine glass that was almost filled to the brim. "I deserve this."

"Sure," she replied, amused. "Do you deserve the hangover, too?"

"The buzz doesn't last for long," Chloé said before drinking half of the glass at a single time. "I heal it, you know?"

"That's a waste of money, then."

Chloé shrugged. "The warmth feels good for a bit—not that you'd know, you fetus."

"This fetus is supposed to be your bodyguard," she pointed out, shrugging out of her jacket and hanging it on the back of one of the dining chairs. "Who's to say I'll still do that if you're mean to me?"

With a scoff, Chloé retorted, "Please, you enjoy being degraded."

"I'm _fifteen_."

"Good for you." Chloé focused her efforts on pouring more wine from the bottle into her glass, movements clumsier than Marinette had ever seen before. "Weren't you fourteen—like last week?"

"Something like that," she agreed, getting a normal glass from a cabinet and opening the fridge for her own drink. "That's generally how birthdays work."

Chloé snorted. "I don't fucking keep track any more."

"That's because you're an old lady," she taunted.

With the arm that was holding onto the glass, Chloé looked like she was debating whether to throw it or not. Then, she decided to drink it instead.

Marinette took the leftovers from last night to eat in her bedroom.

Chloé ended up putting music on, singing along loudly to it.

It wasn't as loud as the cinema.

She wasn't sure whether it was an experience that she wanted to repeat, but Adrien and his friends went often. That was what he'd been doing before he was kidnapped, wasn't it?

Maybe it was worth it to go along, just to supervise.

The film was a plus, too, even if she was confused by a lot of it.

"What else haven't you done before?" Alya asked during lunch the following week. Her mouth was full of food, making her voice come out weird, and it was generally repulsive to look at her when she spoke like that.

Nino questioned, "What, babe?"

"Marinette," Alya explained, gesturing to her. "It was her first time at the cinema. We could make a list and check stuff off if you're super deprived. I just need to know how bad it is."

Marinette squinted. "Why?"

"Because we're friends," Alya declared matter-of-factly.

But that didn't—

It didn't mean anything, not really. Marinette wasn't there to bond with them; it didn't matter to her whether Alya or Nino liked her. Sure, it made it easier to spend time with Adrien, but that had never been her objective.

And yet, there she was, sitting with them and being included in conversation as though it was completely natural.

The previous year, Alya had only just started to glance her way.

It still baffled her.

"I'm busy," Marinette said.

Nino was the one to reply, "Tell us when you're not."

"Guys," Adrien butted in, a fond smile tugging on his lips. "Let's not crowd her, yeah? Marinette has to help her grandpa at the weekends."

Alya deflated at that. "Oh, sorry."

"If you ever want to hang out with us, that's cool," Adrien said, turning to face her. "But I know you have—have responsibilities."

She didn't know how to feel about him phrasing it like that.

"Yes," Marinette confirmed.

Nino let out a laugh. "That's all you've got to say?"

Tucking some hair behind her ear, Marinette didn't add anything else onto that, focusing on eating her lunch instead.

-x-

Adrien had invited her over to his house, along with his friends.

His reasoning was that instead of lurking outside his bedroom—which were his exact words in his message—she could come inside and _chill_ with them.

There was that worry that Adrien's parents might recognise her as the girl that sometimes walked through their street, but that could be explained away by saying she lived in a nearby neighbourhood, or that she liked to stay fit by going on walks.

For her to agree, Adrien just had to look at her with wide eyes in person and ask, "Please?"

She was never good at saying no to him.

And for him to look at her with such a friendly expression, to be comfortable enough to have his smile reach his green-coloured eyes—

It wasn't something she wanted to lose yet.

If it came to it, she'd rather be the bad person in order to keep him safe.

Thus far, he'd been agreeable; Adrien asked some questions about demons, trying to probe her for answers on random occasions, but then his attention shifted to something else.

She was willing to answer them.

There wasn't anyone stopping her any more, was there? Aloys was gone—hopefully, buried, but she never enquired what had happened with his body—and Fu had no control over her actions (not that he had ever tried).

She was her own person.

It just happened that that was all because of Adrien.

He was her weak spot, the person that she cared about above all others—

Chloé had died for her.

And Marinette—Marinette didn't know whether she could regenerate, didn't know the extent of her body's abilities, but she wouldn't hesitate to do the same for Adrien.

Getting closer to him would only benefit her.

It was with that thought in mind that she knocked on his front door, eyes glancing to the driveway again to confirm that his father wasn't in. She wasn't good with parental figures as it was—not after she'd tucked out from Nino's before—and didn't want to tackle the most difficult one first.

Emilie Agreste didn't look like Aloys.

That's what Marinette wanted to think, but she—

She could barely remember how Aloys looked.

It was the photograph that she'd kept of him that kept that memory alive, but it was fleeting. She didn't remember how he walked, how his laugh sounded, or his voice when he'd called her an affectionate name.

Her childhood wasn't something she could recall freely; she remembered the cold, the pain in her stomach from lack of eating—

She remembered Adrien's warmth as he embraced her, or took her hand to happily show her his new toys in his bedroom.

All Marinette could hope was that Emilie was warmth for him.

Emilie had greeted her, gesturing for her to come in when Adrien came running down the stairs, calling out Marinette's name.

"You made it!" he exclaimed, holding onto the bannister as he jumped onto the last step. "I thought you were going to be a no-show."

After taking her shoes off and leaving them at the front door, Adrien ushered her upstairs, pointing out which room was his for her to go in while he went to go talk to his mother quickly.

The door didn't creak when she opened.

Alya and Nino were there lounging on a sofa in the room, a black-coloured cat stretched across one of the cushions, paws pushing against Alya's thigh, as though trying to push her off.

Marinette paused in the hallway.

That was—that was the cat she'd seen pictures of before, wasn't it? The kitten that Adrien had been given after he'd left his grandfather's home for the last time.

She didn't remember the name.

Nino was the one to tell her. "Marinette, you made it! Come meet Plagg."

She approached cautiously.

There had never been a point where she'd interacted with pets. There had been a few dogs when she was younger, but they'd stuck with their owner, not for her to approach.

"He's chill," Nino told her, gesturing with a hand for her to come closer. "You should get used to him, though. Whenever someone's here, he comes begging for attention."

Adrien's dramatic entrance came with him clearing his throat loudly. "You better _not_ be calling my cat a slut."

"He's as much of an attention whore as you are," Alya quipped. "People say pets are like their owners, right?"

He scowled. "I'll kick you out."

"Your mother loves me." Alya grinned, showing her teeth. "Try it."

"I'll tell her you're bullying me," Adrien retorted, dragging a beanbag from one side of the room over to be beside the sofa, so he wouldn't have to move his cat to sit down. "Parents have to believe their kids."

Nino hummed. "Yeah, we'll see."

"I hate you both," he muttered.

Alya flashed him a peace sign with her hand.

It was then that Adrien looked back at her as he fluffed up the beanbag, curiously asking, "Aren't you going to sit down?"

She was still standing there.

Her eyes darted between the occupied sofa and the singular beanbag.

"You can share with me," Adrien offered, gesturing towards his new chair. "It's big enough for two, and I promise not to hit you with my elbows."

"Plagg will try and bite us if we move him," Alya offered as an explanation.

"It's a _nibble_," Adrien defended, sounding as though it was an old argument. "His teeth don't even break the skin! He's nice!"

Nino snickered. "He's absolutely feral, don't be fooled, Marinette."

"Stop slandering my cat," Adrien said, crossing his arms. "I love him more than any of you."

"Weird, bro," Nino responded.

"It's not weird to love your cat," Adrien retorted. "He's great and loves me more than any of you."

Alya purposely coughed in her hand and she choked out, "Loser."

"I'd throw something at you, but I don't want to scare him," Adrien muttered.

Marinette was still standing there uncertainly.

She was in her socks, a blade concealed underneath her clothing, standing in front of three teenagers that had already changed out of their uniform, looking like they belonged with each other.

It was strange.

Adrien patted the beanbag beside him, still looking at her, and she couldn't say no.

It was preferable to sitting on the floor.

She'd never sat on a beanbag before.

The noise it made was strange, along with the feeling, but it wasn't awful.

They started off with video games again. It was one where only two people could play at once, and it ended up being Adrien and Alya.

She didn't understand much.

But Adrien was explaining it to her, happily pointing out that it was the game he'd been talking about before.

When their characters progressed to what they dubbed to be the first boss, Marinette asked, "What are they supposed to be?"

"Demons," Nino replied.

She almost laughed.

And when she sent Adrien a curious look, he didn't try to hide his smile.

It was amusing to him.

Him, who'd been kidnapped by demons—

She wasn't going to tell him off for dealing with trauma in his own way.

Marinette knew that she made mistakes—leaving him in the house and running away after his kidnapping was one of them.

She wouldn't make the mistake of trying to control him.

However, when it came time for him to pass the controller to her, leaning over and trying to explain what each button did, it was very obvious that she barely knew what she was doing. The section of the screen that showed her character was often going the wrong way, or her reactions were stunted and not quick enough to avoid the attacks.

Nino was good, though, so he helped her out.

Adrien quietly told her what buttons to press to try and cause attack combinations to happen.

It was a very weird experience.

The demons did disappear into ash when they were killed, but there was no mention of them reviving. They didn't look human—teeth and nails too sharp, large and strange-looking—and didn't speak any recognisable language.

She did ponder whether someone in the know had been one of the creators, slipping in the detail for fun.

It wasn't like anyone besides her would notice it.

Well, Adrien _might_.

He never brought it up.

She preferred to watch than play any more.

Adrien passed the second controller over to the sofa—where Plagg was still occupying the one cushion, either sleeping or nudging his head against Alya or Nino for attention—but the conversation involved the four of them.

Alya liked to swear when she got really into the game.

When Adrien's mother called up to tell them that dinner was ready, Adrien nudged her gently with his elbow. "I told her about you eating with your grandfather. You're free to go whenever you want."

"I doubt she wants to stick around and see you stuff your face, dude," Alya interjected.

"You're worse," Marinette blurted. "You talk with your mouthful."

Nino's laughter sounded delightful. "_Right_?"

Alya sniffed. "I get excited."

"There's no good reason for forgetting your manners," Adrien snootily replied.

"All right, loser." Alya scoffed, tossing her hair over her shoulder as she stood up, causing Plagg to wake up and rearrange himself to get comfortable again. "Not all of us can have a permanent stick up our ass like you."

Adrien narrowed his eyes. "I'm going to spit in your food."

Alya just laughed.

Nino offered a hand out to help her up off of the beanbag. "Let's ignore these two squabbling, yeah?"

Marinette accepted his help. "I'm leaving you with them."

"Grandfather, right?" he enquired, curious. "It's cool that you care about him so much."

She awkwardly shrugged at that.

Because—what was she supposed to say? The knowledge they had, including Adrien, was that her grandfather was her last remaining member of her family.

She wasn't about to tell them that that was a lie any time soon.

If everything went according to plan, they'd never find out.

"I should go," she said, adjusting her jacket and zipping it up. "I—bye."

"See you," Nino replied, waving.

Adrien volunteered to walk her to the end of the street.

His mother readily agreed when he told her that Marinette lived nearby, and that he'd be back soon for dinner.

Alya and Nino were trusted to either stay in his bedroom or sit and talk to his mother in his absence.

"You don't have to," Marinette said as soon as the door closed. "I wasn't planning on walking."

His brow furrowed. "You're going to waste money on a ride?"

"No," she denied with a shake of her head. After retrieving the bandalore from her pocket, she slipped her finger through the loop, holding up the weapon. "I was going to use this."

There was a moment where all his expression showed was his bewilderment before he cautiously looked between the bandalore and her face. "That—I saw that before, right? That... that night?"

They started to trek towards the end of the street,

"Briefly," she confirmed, turning the weapon over and getting a comfortable grip on it. "It's how I get around when it's dark as faster than walking."

He blurted, "Why only dark?"

"Less likely to be spotted," she pointed out, letting the bandalore fall an inch or two before pulling it back into her hand. "This isn't something I want the whole world to see, you know?"

His voice was quiet as he asked, "What... is it?"

There was only one correct answer to that.

"It's what—what your grandfather was protecting," she told him.

Adrien stared at her with wide eyes. "It is?"

"Along with the blades," Marinette confirmed, pressing a hand to her side, feeling the weapon through her clothing. "He entrusted them to me."

He was blinking a lot after that, smile not quite reaching his eyes as he whispered, "That's..."

"You should get back," she interrupted softly. "Everyone's waiting for you."

Adrien looked close to crying as he looked at her. "Thank you."

She frowned. "I didn't do anything."

"Thank you for—for doing what he asked," he blurted out, voice wobbling from his restrained emotions. "I don't understand everything—I don't think I ever will—but you're... you're good, Marinette."

There was no reply that came to mind.

"I hope you come by again," Adrien whispered, reaching out to gently touch her arm. "Thank you, really."

She could clearly see the tears in his eyes.

And it seemed he became aware of them, because he quickly retracted his hand to wipe at his eyes with his palm, taking a step back as he choked out, "Bye."

He ran down the street.

Marinette stayed there until he was safely inside.

-x-

Chloé didn't have as much killing any more.

She was frustrated more often than not, thoroughly annoyed that she couldn't do what she used to be able to, taking her anger out on furniture or wrecking the home that they were temporarily in.

Marinette didn't tell her off.

It wasn't her place to.

There was the fact that it didn't matter if they left evidence. The demon would be back in twenty-four hours, memory wiped of the previous evening, and they wouldn't risk going to the police to try and get any professional insight of what had happened, or to have hairs or fingerprints analysed.

It would only involve outside sources and cause a scene.

From what she'd been told, the leading business of making false identities was run by demons in their city.

It made sense; they could change their appearance, appear any age that they'd lived up to—though Chloé _refused_ to be old enough to be mistaken for Marinette's grandmother—and they couldn't resort to killing to try and get through their daily lives.

Marinette wondered whether Fu had gotten her papers from a demon.

"I can get you a fake," Chloé readily offered when Marinette brought up the subject. "Pretend you've got a baby face so we can go clubbing. It's the _perfect_ place to scout for an easy target."

She frowned. "There's cameras."

"There's cameras everywhere nowadays, idiot," was the response she got to that. "You've got to live a little sometimes, you know? Or we could take you to a strip club."

"I'm _fifteen_."

Chloé snorted. "You're repeating that a lot."

"Because you don't seem to know what that means," Marinette muttered, leaning back against the booth that they were seated in.

It was a diner nearby Chloé's home, close enough that Marinette had opted to leave her jacket behind. Chloé was looking like a teenager again, dressed with a see-through shirt that allowed the whole of her brassiere to be seen.

Marinette would never wear something like that.

But it was how Chloé liked to dress when she was out of work; no longer covering up, trying to appear professional (that was the reason for the wrinkles around her eyes, to match her identification).

"Boring," Chloé remarked. "I've done all of this for you, and you're sucking the life out of me."

"You can go out with others," Marinette pointed out.

"And risk being shanked?" Chloé queried, raising her eyebrows. "I don't trust anyone right now, let alone friendly demons."

She snorted. "What am I?"

"Nobody," Chloé assured her, reaching across the table to place a hand on top of Marinette's. "You're pathetic and mortal. I hope you know that."

She slapped her hand away. "That's really good for my self-esteem, thanks."

"Any time." Chloé's grin showed her teeth. "That's what I'm here for."

They were friends, weren't they?

Chloé proved that through actions, rather than words, and Marinette thought that she was doing the same. She was never going to outright state how much the other had come to mean to her; surely, Chloé had to assume that she was there still out of more than a sense of obligation.

The smile on Chloé's lips quickly turned into a scowl. "A demon's here."

Marinette was the one facing the door. She peered to the side, taking a casual sip of her drink as she spotted the newcomer.

They weren't alone.

"Two?" she asked.

Chloé pursed her lips before nodding.

"Do you know them?"

"I'll check when we leave," Chloé responded.

There wasn't any chance of something happening in public. It would only draw unsavoury attention—not to mention the fact that they'd regenerate in the middle of a diner that would probably be closed due to a murder if anything really happened.

It wasn't smart.

Sometimes, she had to admit that the way demons did things was logical.

They didn't take over the world because of angels—but angels were sparse, had only one life and seemed to be attracted to the purity of humans instead of groups of demons.

Chloé had never seen an angel with her own eyes, and she'd lived hundreds of years.

Marinette quietly described the duo that had come into the diner, sitting within her eyeline. They didn't look towards her table, never acknowledged Chloé in the slightest—but what were the chances?

Others had already tried to take advantage of Chloé's weakened state.

It made sense, didn't it? Chloé had always told her to go for the demons that had already died recently, to cut them down further. It didn't pass much power to Chloé if she had the killing blow, but it made her stronger in the long run.

The idea was to cut the competition before it could even appear.

They were stronger than Chloé, but they thought she was alone.

Marinette felt a thrill of excitement as they placed the money for the meal on the table, getting ready to leave.

There was something different about Chloé being targeted as of late—Marinette felt more connected, that she had a reason to be there, more than senselessly killing whoever was recommended to her.

It felt personal.

They were being followed.

She had her hand on her bandalore in her pocket, choosing not to get the blade out so soon. It would only draw attention to her.

They went to a dark place, away from the street.

When the first blow came, Marinette didn't hear them appear.

Chloé fell onto her front, choking out a gasp, and Marinette barely had time to register that there was a fist through Chloé's back with blood pouring out.

With a flick of her wrist, the body of the bandalore hit the demon in the nose, enough force to break it and hopefully crush it into the brain—

But they were still moving, the hit evidently not killing them in an instant.

The string tied around them—their bloodied hand still gouged into Chloé's back, and Marinette took her blade out of the sheath, stabbing in the first heart area.

It was the same as a humans.

There wasn't any interruption before she caused the body to disappear into ash.

Two hearts meant they were on the middle of the scale, but they'd been too focused on Chloé to consider Marinette a threat in the first place.

Witnesses had to be killed, sure, but if they did that first, it could cause their target to escape.

Chloé was coughing up blood, her face covered in dirt and scratches that were rapidly healing when she lifted her head up. She grunted in pain and touched her back as she sat up, hands quickly becoming covered in blood.

Marinette wiped her blade on her leggings before putting it away.

There wasn't any sight of the second demon.

"I'm going back inside," she stated.

Chloé's face was healed as she scowled. "Fine."

When she approached the diner, she could see the second demon through the window. They were eating their food, minding their own business as they scrolled through their phone, not at all looking concerned that their companion had disappeared.

The trust hadn't been there to share the kill, and there was no point to it when Chloé was so weak.

Marinette waited onto the curb across the street, one hand on her bandalore and the other fiddling with her phone, appearing casual.

Adrien had texted her.

She replied back that she was technically on a stakeout.

He asked whether she really had a stake.

Humour seemed to be his way of coping with things.

It was close to five minutes later that the demon paid for their meal, putting their coat on before leaving.

Marinette followed them.

They were walking through crowds, not going to any near parking lots, and the phone had been put away.

Were they supposed to meet up with the other somewhere?

She didn't try and be inconspicuous.

They wouldn't kill her in public.

At one point, they turned their head before crossing the road, clearly make eye contact with her for longer than necessary.

Marinette ran to catch up before the light changed.

They were the one to duck somewhere dark, away from a crowd.

She didn't hesitate to follow.

Demons were like humans in a way; they could regenerate and heal from any injury, sure, but they needed to _breathe_. Temporarily killing them so their functioning heart would stop working gave her an opening to attack their other hearts, something that was usually hard to do if they were aware and moving.

Rather than trying to break their nose, Marinette struck with the bandalore hitting them in the throat.

They had two hearts.

Marinette stood by the bloodied floor for a moment, replying back to Adrien's text, telling him that she was fine and finished for the evening.

He sent her back a happy emoji.

When she got back to where she left Chloé, she was still sitting there, staring up at the evening sky above.

The stars weren't visible.

"Was a two again," Marinette said as her greeting.

"Fucking great," Chloé grunted, looking down at her torn shirt in anger. "Of course they were fucking weak."

She didn't comment that Chloé was weak, too.

Chloé had to take her jacket off and tie it around her stomach. It was higher than it should've been, but she needed to hide the gaping hole in her shirt and the blood that was covering the area.

They walked quickly.

Chloé was still angry when they got back.

There wasn't anything she could say to comfort her.

The attack had happened suddenly, too quickly for Marinette to respond to normally, and Chloé clearly hadn't been prepared, even though they'd ducked into that area for the confrontation.

The sudden difference must've been hard to live with.

"This is so fucking stupid," Chloé grumbled, throwing her keys and missing the pot where she kept them, causing them to clatter to the floor carelessly. "I can't believe this is happening to _me_."

Chloé's greatest pride had been her strength.

Marinette couldn't hold her tongue. "If your plan isn't for world domination, why does strength matter?"

Chloé glared at her. "Why do you think, idiot?"

"You tell me." She shrugged, taking her shoes off. "If you're going to live forever, what's the point of making a target of yourself?"

"You're a target if you're weak," Chloé shot back. "The weak _die_. It's an endless thing."

"Just—go live in the countryside and away from other demons."

Chloé wrinkled her nose. "I don't want to own a fucking farm."

"It can't be so bad nowadays," Marinette pointed out. "Better than living in the capital and constantly having to fight."

"I get restless," Chloé said as she pulled her hair into a messy ponytail, inspecting her shirt before pulling it off and tossing it into the washing machine. "I want to do what I want with my life, and that so happens to be here right now."

She asked, "And what's that? Having an office job and eating junk food?"

"I'm embezzling and planning to fake my death," Chloé wryly replied. "You don't really think I'd be content to just be a human, do you?"

Marinette blinked. "You're—what?"

"Stealing," was the patronising response she got.

"Oh," she said. "I never thought of that."

"Of course you didn't." It came out sounding very condescending. "You're only fifteen."

Marinette laughed. "Thanks for remembering my age."

"Even when you're dead, you'll still be a child to me," Chloé proclaimed.

She grinned, not missing the opportunity to say, "Okay, old lady."

"You fucking _brat—_"

-x-

"Were you outside my window last night?" Adrien asked her.

Marinette furrowed her brow. "I was on a roof."

"Yeah, but that's still outside my window, isn't it?" he pointed out, nodding along with his words. "I thought I saw something. Now I know it was you."

"I did text you that I was out," she replied.

"You didn't say you were out at _mine_," he responded, tapping his pen against the table in an irregular rhythm. "That's—that's completely different, isn't it?"

Marinette said honestly, "I never tell you everything."

"No," he agreed, eyes on the paper as he scanned the questions that they were supposed to be answering. "But you—you could've said something."

She wrote down her calculations. "That wouldn't have done anything?"

"Do you come by often?" he asked instead.

"You know I do," Marinette quietly told him. The class was one of the smallest, and the teacher wasn't strict, meaning students were allowed to talk amongst themselves as long as they got the work done. "I check on you."

He suggested, "You could text?"

"It might not prove it's you," she readily explained, still looking down at her worksheet. "I feel better checking you're there, and it's not like it takes me long to get there."

Adrien queried, "You don't actually live close, do you?"

"I'm never telling you where I live," she admitted. "It's not safe."

"Because you—you live with one of... them?" he said slowly, the last word coming out like a question. "Still?"

She nodded. "I do."

"What about your grandfather?" he prodded. "Isn't he—is he okay? By himself?"

There wasn't a part of her that cared for Fu. He'd been a stepping stone that she'd left behind.

"He's fine," she replied, happy that she didn't have to look Adrien in the eyes. "We were never that close to begin with. It's much better like this."

Adrien sounded perplexed. "It is?"

"Yes," she confirmed, glancing towards him to see his furrowed brows, expression clearly showing his confusion.

There was something endearing about how open he was all of the time; with his tears, his emotions, and how he felt at any given time.

"If you say so," was how that topic of conversation was ended.

Adrien, Alya, and Nino were still on a crusade to be her friend.

If she was in a class with at least one of them, they could appear and sit at her desk, or pair up with her if it was needed. It was a stark difference to the previous year, where the teacher would pair her with the last remaining student, Marinette keeping quiet and barely talking.

But she was opening up, slowly.

There was more to talk to Nino about than just music.

And Alya—Alya actually seemed to care about her.

That was found out when they'd changed into their sports outfits for class.

The boys were on one side with a different teachers, girls on the other.

They were being taught the same sport, but separated.

Marinette walked across the room to join the rest of the girls, adjusting her clothes before she sat down. The shirt she wore was oversized, could've been classed as a dress by itself, and the shorts were much the same to conceal the weapon she had on underneath.

She'd never had a problem with it before.

"What _happened_?" Alya asked, looking as horrified as she sounded when Marinette sat down beside her.

Marinette looked at her in confusion. "What?"

Alya's voice came out high-pitched. "Your legs?"

She looked down.

Bruises were blossoming across her shins, sticking out from the socks she'd pulled up, and they were bound to get worse with the upcoming days. The demon had the gall to knock on Chloé's front door and barge their way inside, and Marinette had ended up with her legs and ribs hurting, but nothing had broken.

Chloé had said she didn't need make-up for her body, but, evidently, she did if it was going to cause such distress in her class-mates.

She shrugged. "I tripped."

"You... tripped," Alya dubiously repeated, still staring down at the bruises.

They covered almost all of her calf.

"Yes," she insisted. "It's fine, I bruise easily."

Alya dropped the subject, but it wasn't forgotten.

Marinette wore leggings underneath her shorts the next day. The weather was getting colder, so it was a legitimate thing, but Alya's gaze had lingered on her legs again.

Her ribs were a bit tender, but it didn't hinder her that much. It was only when reaching up to a high shelf that they hurt.

Chloé liked to laugh and point out how much taller she was than Marinette.

Marinette just called her old in return.

It was a good friendship.

Because—that's what it was, wasn't it? Friends lived together, friends chatted and ate their meals willingly with each other instead of sitting in separate rooms, and she trusted Chloé.

She wasn't constantly looking up at her in suspicion to see whether there was something nefarious behind her expression.

Chloé had died for her.

It was only fair that she did the same, wasn't it?

Marinette didn't mind killing.

She tested different ways to use the bandalore; wanting more than wrapping them up to secure the kill to be her staple. As much as she knew she was helpless without it, there wasn't much she could do.

Going to the gym didn't help when the weakest a demon could possibly be was still more than a human.

So, she admired the bruises on her skin, remembering the reasons that they were there. Her injuries weren't for nothing—and she'd heal, so it was only a passing annoyance.

She wanted to get creative.

"If I remove your head," Marinette started, leaning back and putting her weight on her hands. "Where would you regenerate from? The body left behind, or the head?

"Biggest body part," Chloé replied, sunglasses perched on her noise.

It was October, but she insisted that they looked good.

She made a disapproving noise. "Good to know I can't just bring you a head back, then."

Chloé snickered. "Nice try."

They were in a local park, seated on one of the benches and watching the crowds in front of them. Chloé liked to call it scouting for their next victim, but Marinette thought she just liked to critique other people's clothing.

"...So if I made the head the _biggest _part?"

Chloé threw her head back and laughed. "Is that really worth the effort? You'd have to cut them up before they had the chance to regenerate in the first place."

"To messy," Marinette glumly agreed. "It was a nice dream."

"Sure." Chloé sounded amused. "Don't you think I would've suggested an easier way already? Sadly, you booty-calling me for a murder is the best way."

"I do _not_ booty-call you," she retorted.

Chloé raised her eyebrows so they were visible past her oversized sunglasses. "I'm surprised you know what that means."

"It means you're gross," she muttered, close to rolling her eyes. "I'm going home, this is boring."

"All right, loser," Chloé said as her good-bye, making no moves to get up. "Pick something out for dinner, will you?"

The bruises weren't fading any time soon.

Marinette could forget about them, barely remember that they were there at all, until it was time to exercise and Alya's eyes would slide to her legs. It had come to the point that she'd be in the changing room still, waiting for her to emerge from the toilets, rather than meeting her in the gym.

The good news was that her ribs didn't hurt any more.

And Chloé was right—the bruises healed slowly, as much as a normal person.

She might've looked that up.

Marinette didn't have a lot of experience with injuries. Until the summer, she doubted that she'd broken a bone before, let alone almost _died_ because of the extent of her injuries.

"You're coming to mine," Alya fiercely told her after they'd finished the class, retreating into the changing rooms to slip on their uniforms again. "When are you free?"

She blinked. "Eh?"

Taking ahold of her hands, Alya stared into her eyes as she asked again, "When are you free?"

Alya was taller than her.

Marinette questioned back, "What for?"

"A sleepover," Alya insisted, refusing to budge.

"Not happening," she rejected without a second thought.

Alya wasn't taking no for an answer. "Dinner, then."

"I don't—I eat with my grandfather," Marinette stammered out her excuse, still not comfortable with the prospect of sitting down with any of their families. The emotions that it would stir in her were unknown, but she didn't want to face that. "I can't."

For a moment, neither of them said anything more, simply looking at each other.

Marinette couldn't figure out why Alya was looking at her so intently.

Then, Alya let go of her with a sigh. "Okay."

"Okay?" she questioned, a bit confused with the sudden turn.

Alya ran a hand through her hair. "If we have a party, will you come to that?"

"Alya—"

She was interrupted by, "It won't start until the evening, so you can come _after_ you've eaten with him. That sounds fair, right?"

"I don't know," Marinette lamely replied. "I've never—"

Alya sounded strangled. "Been to a party?"

"No," she confirmed, averting her gaze.

"Marinette, you—"

"I need to get changed," she butted in, ending the conversation as she grabbed her pile of clothing before rushing into the bathroom, taking up one of the stalls.

Parties were a thing that she hadn't thought she'd need to face.

Too many people, loud music—

Like the cinema all over again.

But Adrien had been there, close to her and looking at her with a smile whenever she glanced his way, so it might be the same. Alya wouldn't invite her anywhere without Adrien coming along; her and her friends were a joint package, a trio that went everywhere together.

Their social media was proof of that.

The subject wasn't dropped.

"Halloween's coming up," Nino brought up, turning around in his seat to face her. "Any plans?"

The question was directed at her, not anyone else.

Marinette looked to the others for help with answering the question, but Alya was looking at her worksheet and refusing to glance anywhere else, and Adrien was staring out the window, body language stiff and giving away that he was listening in on them.

"Did Alya put you up to this?" she bluntly asked.

Alya dropped her pencil and whirled to the side, aghast. "I did _not_."

She frowned. "Then—why?"

"Your first party needs to be an experience," Nino clarified. "My parents are letting me have it at my place. Do you remember them? You met my mother when you came last time."

She gave a non-committal answer of, "Vaguely."

Adrien gave in and copied Nino, turning around in his seat to face them, a sheepish smile present on his lips. "It won't be anything too big, and with parental supervision, of course."

"...Of course," she repeated, dubious.

"We want you to come," Alya said, looking at her with wide eyes. "There'll only be a few others, and we'll dress up in silly costumes."

Marinette questioned, "Silly costumes?"

"Well, we can't go for slutty when Nino's parents will be there," Alya tartly replied, brushing her hair over her shoulder. "They have to think highly of me, you know? I can't be a good girlfriend if all his mother can think about is that time my underage ass was literally hanging out at a party."

Nino choked out a laugh. "Babe, she'd never—"

"Says you!" Alya declared, pointing a finger his way. "My mother still remembers that time _you—_"

"Okay, that's enough of that," Adrien interrupted, stretching his arms to put one hand on both of their shoulders. "You're both wonderful and wholesome people, and we're going to keep this suitable for children, yes?"

Alya scowled. "Fuck you."

His smile showed his dimples. "Good answer."

The days leading up to it had a lot of excitement for them.

Alya texted her a lot.

The messages ranged from asking how she was, what she was doing, to Alya showing her weird costumes on the internet and asking whether she thought it would get there in time.

The whole experience was kind of strange.

Adrien sent her a picture with a witch hat on, asking whether she liked it.

Did it matter if she did?

The hat looked too small for him.

He asked whether she wanted to wear it instead.

Marinette said no.

He replied that he'd bring it to the party for her if she didn't find a costume by then.

The whole idea of buying a costume seemed ridiculous. It wasn't something she'd purchased before, and she'd only seen the young children on the streets in them, or those on television that were far too expensive and not made for normal teenagers.

It was one of the first time she'd categorised herself as that.

Chloé brought up the subject by inviting her out.

It was more like threatening her, though.

"What?" Marinette questioned, bewildered. "No one's going to let me into a nightclub—plus, why would I go with _you_?"

"To protect me," Chloé replied. "You owe me, remember? And I've got your answer right here."

In Chloé's hand was an identification card that definitely wasn't hers; the picture of it was Marinette, but it looked smoother, freckles barely visible on her skin, and the details stated that she was of legal age to drink.

"No one's going to believe that," she flatly told her.

Chloé laughed. "You'll be dressed up, it's fine."

"I'm already—"

"Don't be a fucking prude, come on," Chloé goaded, shoving the card back into her wallet and throwing onto the kitchen countertop. "I won't let you drink _that_ much. It'll be fun."

She pursed her lips, unimpressed.

"You've never been to a club before," Chloé pointed out matter-of-factly. "What better way to break that first than with a _demon_? I can teach you how to party like no one else."

"I'm going to a party," Marinette retorted. "Already. With my class-mates."

Chloé positively cackled at that. "Oh, you poor thing."

There was no mention of Adrien.

Chloé didn't know he existed, and she was going to keep it that way.

"Come after," Chloé demanded. "They're your age, yes? That means it'll be over before it's even midnight. There's time for us to go out afterwards."

She wasn't taking no for an answer.

And so, Marinette relented.

The idea of going clubbing with Chloé was surreal. Marinette thought she looked too young and being underweight didn't help that.

There was no way a bouncer was going to let her in.

If she had to sit on a nearby rooftop and escort Chloé home, she was prepared to do that.

-x-

Alya did get Marinette to go over to her house.

It was after school.

They'd all walked home together, and instead of splitting up to change and meet up later like they usually did, they talked Marinette into coming over and spending time with them at Alya's.

She had no reason to say no.

Adrien was there—he would be there for hours before going home, and she wanted to make sure that happened.

"We have, like, half an hour before my younger sisters get home," Alya said as she opened up her front door, gesturing for everyone to go in before her. "I'd say grab what you want to drink now and hide up in my room. If they realise you're here, they're going to bug us _forever_."

Marinette wasn't told to take her shoes off.

It was a detail that changed depending on which house she was at.

Alya listed a few options for drinks, passing each of them a glass with their preferred drink, and they went up creaky steps to the last bedroom along the hall.

The bedroom was the most decorated of the three; posters on the wall, a blanket lazily thrown over the end of the bed, and a lot of the colours in the room clashed, but it was nice.

It felt lived in.

There was only a desk chair to sit on, and before anyone had the option of sitting down, Alya had reached out and grabbed her hand, pulling her onto the bed.

Marinette was bit bewildered.

It was mostly talking.

At Nino's and Adrien's, there was a clear reason for being there to play video games.

Marinette felt a bit out of place, but she was literally sitting in the middle of them—with Nino sat on her other side, not touching her—and they kept looking at her to input her thoughts on the topic.

It wasn't awful.

Marinette was smiling a lot, amused at their banter and how comfortable they were with each other. As much as she'd come to know them, she was still more relaxed and calm when with Chloé; which was saying something, considering she'd been teaming up with the enemy.

She was letting her guard down, though.

When Alya's little sisters burst through the bedroom door, she jumped.

They were ushered out, told to stop showing off and trying to get Nino's attention (much to his amusement), and they could be heard through the thin walls in the other room.

That was all she saw of the sisters.

It did bring a question to her mind.

Chloé was home when she got there.

"You can change to any age, right?" Marinette asked as her greeting, almost tripping over her shoes after she'd taken them off. "And by that I mean, _any_."

"Yeah, sure, but any age over eighty tends to look the same," Chloé replied, not looking up from where she was tapping away at the keyboard of her laptop. "I'm not going a day over forty without a good bribe."

Ignoring that, she questioned, "That means you can turn into a kid, right? Like—a toddler? Or even a baby?"

Chloé snorted. "Yes."

"So do some—do they pose as children?" Marinette asked, feeling a bit frantic from the sudden revelation. It had never occurred to her before, not even when she'd found out about the ability to age. "And get adopted and shit?"

"If they want," Chloé confirmed. "But what fun would that be? You'll either have to be into age-play or look like there's something fucking wrong since you're not like other kids. No, thank you."

"But it's possible," she insisted, reaching up and running a hand through her hair, gripping at the roots. "They could do—they could be in school, right? And I wouldn't know."

Chloé looked up with raised eyebrows. "Why is this bothering you now?"

"Because I don't _know_!" Marinette exclaimed, hand falling down to her side. "It's—I'm useless unless you tell me who I'm looking for. I don't—"

"Why would it even matter?" Chloé questioned. "If they're committed to being a kid, I doubt they're going to break cover any time soon. They're bored."

She swallowed.

"If you're _that_ bothered about being human, try and stab everyone you know," Chloé suggested, smile showing her teeth. "What better way to see whether they're normal, right? A pencil would be good enough to see if they heal too fast."

For a moment, Marinette thought that sounded promising.

Then, she declared, "Or I could hit them with a basketball."

Chloé laughed. "Right in the face?"

"Best way to see if they're injured, yes?" Marinette theorised, trying to remember what sport they were supposed to be playing the following week. "I think I can manage that."

And thus, her plan to maim the students in her year began.

It wasn't perfect, of course.

Marinette couldn't go around and all the others in different years, but she was going to take what she could get. There was the potential for a demon to be _there_, right under her nose, and that was more than enough to get her paranoid.

There was bound to be none.

Adrien was safe at school. It was outside, either when he was walking home or alone after his friends had left from where they'd met up in the city, that he'd been spotted before.

She didn't know what range demons needed to be within to identify him.

One had been close, another had been driving in the car beside him, and Chloé couldn't give her any precise answers without questioning her why she needed that information in the first place.

There was only one person she could talk to about it, but he was still trying to come to terms with what was happening.

So, Marinette did it alone.

She was usually good at sports; was able to throw the ball where she wanted, tended not to bump into other people, and was fast from the years of having to be agile to stay alive.

It helped that her ribs weren't hurting any more.

The bruises were yellow along her legs, visible against her pale skin as she'd opted not to bring her leggings in, but the others she'd gained were hidden underneath her baggy clothing.

The lessons were taking place outside that day.

It was when she was approaching the rest of the students that she pretended to trip, causing the boy beside her to fall over because of her.

His scrapped knees didn't heal immediately.

She didn't sound sincere when she apologised to him.

It earned her an odd look.

While playing, Marinette hit the ball into a girl's face, just like Chloé had suggested.

They were human.

The hardest part of it all was apologising and trying to sound concerned. Marinette had come to the conclusion that she was callous, not caring about another's pain if she didn't know them personally in a positive way.

She'd cared about Alya enough to catch her falling down the stairs, but the random students that she passed in the hallway?

Marinette wouldn't give them a second chance.

If they happened to witness her killing a demon, they would have to go.

She wouldn't feel regret over that.

The top priority was keeping Adrien safe—and if someone were to get in the way of that, even if it meant seeing her committing a crime, they needed to be eliminated.

It was how she was raised.

No one was going to help her, be there to do everything for her; if Marinette wanted something done, she had to do it itself.

That just so happened to mean causing a boy to fall off his bicycle from kicking a stick in his path the following day.

She had theories of purity.

There wasn't much information out there, certainly not any she could find in a local library or on obscure websites on the internet. She didn't know if the purity would increase as the years went on; whether a pure adult would give more power to a demon, or if it was more potent as a baby.

She wondered whether demons went undercover in hospital just to kill a newborn and disappear, but then she realised that they could only change their age, not their overall looks.

It could condemn them to being elderly or a child for the foreseeable future until their picture was forgotten from the crime.

There was still so much that she didn't understand, and angels were at the top of that list.

She didn't know where they came into play.

From what Chloé had told her, they usually appeared when a pure human was _found_. They didn't worry about the consequences of their actions as demons did, either disappearing afterwards or perishing in the fight, and she didn't understand what they gained from it at all.

Purity made demons stronger.

Strength was important for them to try and make a life for themselves with humans, but angels weren't the same.

They belonged somewhere else.

It was the unknown that terrified her.

-x-

"You okay, dude?" Nino asked, offering his hand to help lift her up. "You're real clumsy lately."

"Thanks," Marinette said, accepting his help and brushing the dirt off her clothes. "I got contacts and I'm still trying to adjust to seeing everything properly. It's... not going well."

The lie was accepted easily.

He made a sympathetic. "Oh, that sucks."

She almost couldn't believe that she got away with it.

Marinette thought she wasn't a good liar. Chloé always seemed to know when she wasn't telling the truth, but Nino had accepted it without a second thought.

Alya believed it.

Adrien didn't question it.

It was probably the most believed lie ever told; well, other than that Fu was her grandfather.

People tended to see what they wanted to.

However, it was when she'd managed to make one other student bleed—from ducking out of the way of the ball and causing it to hit the person behind her—that anyone had something to say about it.

Alya remarked, "I think you're a bad luck charm."

Marinette blinked. "I am?"

"If I break my glasses from being your friend, my mother's going to kill me," she grumbled, gesturing wildly to her spectacles. "These are expensive, okay, and I really don't want the cheapest replacement pair."

Marinette tilted her head to the side. "Are they that expensive?"

"Yes," Alya confirmed, eyebrows furrowing as she looked at her. "But not as much as your contacts in the long run, I guess. I can't believe you got the okay for that."

Marinette shrugged.

"Your grandfather was okay with paying for that?" Alya asked, curious.

Before thinking better of it, she said, "I paid for them."

Alya sounded bewildered. "You—you did?"

"I've got money leftover from my parents," she scrambled to say.

"Oh," Alya whispered. "I-I'm sorry for bringing that up."

It was supposed to be a sensitive topic, wasn't it?

"It's fine," Marinette assured her. Then, she added a bit of truth to it with the words, "I don't remember them."

The pitying look that earned her didn't irk her.

She hadn't wanted a parent for years.

The closest was Aloys, but he was long gone.

She still wondered whether she'd see Aloys in Adrien's mother, whether she'd picked up any of his mannerisms—

Would she recognise them?

More than anything, she wanted to know whether Emilie knew. Why else had Adrien spent almost every summer with his grandfather?

She'd come to learn that wasn't what a child wanted to do; they wanted to be with their friends, their own parents, anywhere other than an unknown place where they were in the countryside, far away from the city.

Sometimes, she wondered what had become of Aloys' home.

She'd never gone back.

Adrien grew teary-eyed at any mention of his grandfather, and she wasn't about to introduce herself properly to his parents in an attempt to get any information.

Fu had been friends with Aloys, but she doubted that he knew.

"Marinette," Alya quietly said, softly calling for her attention amongst the busy classroom. "You're okay, right?"

She frowned. "Yes."

For a moment, Alya only looked at her before she smiled. "Okay."

The smile didn't reach her eyes, though.

When it came time for the party, it fell on a Friday.

Adrien suggested that she could come and pick him up, and they'd both walk to Nino's home together.

Marinette hadn't planned on dressing up. The offer for the witch hat was still open, and she doubted that she'd be able to leave after picking Adrien up without it on, so she dressed in her normal clothes.

That was thwarted before she made it out the front door.

"No," Chloé called, closing the door, almost catching Marinette's fingers in the process. "You're not going to look your fake age dressed like that."

She looked down at her outfit with a frown. "It's fine."

"You look like a literal fetus," Chloé deadpanned.

"I'm not dressing in lingerie," Marinette countered, crossing her arms. "I'm going to a party with school children. I don't need any more attention than I already have."

Chloé made a noise of disapproval. "Halloween's literally the day you can turn up with actual blood all over you and no one's going to think anything of it. Live a little."

She snorted. "Yeah, no."

"Wear this," Chloé demanded, gesturing towards a stray shopping bag that was in the hallway. "And we'll stay only an hour or two at the club."

Marinette sighed. "You're still on about that?"

"You owe me." Chloé sounded thrilled about that, clearly focusing on the fact that she had something to hold over Marinette for a long time, rather than the reason it had happened in the first place. "If you don't want to be late meeting up with your little friends, you best hurry up."

Friends was a complicated word for them.

The definition of friendship she had was skewed—it was Chloé, pushing her to the side in a rare feat of selflessness, sacrificing herself for her in an instant.

Alya had given her a new pencil when hers snapped.

It wasn't comparable.

When she inspected the clothes in her bedroom, she decided that Chloé's sense of humour wasn't something she appreciated. It consisted of a white shirt with puffy, long sleeves and frills along the chest, along with tight pants and knee-high boots that had no heels.

The hat had a feather in it.

There was no chance it would stay on if she used her bandalore later that evening, so she left it behind.

The clothes were in her size, of course.

The tight trousers meant that there was nowhere to hide her blade underneath her clothing, and that was when she realised Chloé's idea of a joke had been to dress her as a pirate _because_ of her weapon.

She sighed.

The other blade was hidden, untouched by her for months, and the chances of anyone stealing the current one from her was low.

Still, it didn't seem right to have it on display when her life revolved around hiding it from view.

It was only for a few hours; she'd be around other students that she saw daily, and the ones that weren't friendly with her were bound not to touch her casually.

Chloé cackled when she saw the outfit.

"I'm not wearing the hat," she flatly told her.

"It'll give you hat hair anyway," Chloé remarked, stepping closer and adjusting the fit of the shirt, motioning for her to tuck it in before doing the belt up one loop tighter. "There, you're almost presentable."

Marinette looked at her with a frown. "No one's going to let me in with a sword."

"They'll think it's a prop."

"No one's that _stupid—_"

Chloé questioned. "Who walks around with a sword nowadays? It'll be fine. If not, I'll slip them some more money. It's not exactly a savoury place that we're going to later."

"That's reassuring," she muttered. "I'm so excited."

Chloé kicked her shin.

Marinette gasped. "What was _that_ for?"

"Don't be sarcastic with me," Chloé snapped, crossing her arms.

She gave her a dirty look instead.

The trousers had pockets on the back, but not the front, but it wasn't enough to put her belongings in. She ended up fetching a bag she could put the strap over her chest, letting it rest on her hip.

When she looked in the mirror, she couldn't pass for more than her actual age. No one would look at her and think she was an adult, let alone the legal age to drink.

Then again, Chloé seemed to think that it was entirely possible, so it might be if they went somewhere shady enough.

She didn't put a jacket on to go out.

When she got to Adrien's house, she sent a text to say that she'd arrived, and he answered back that she needed to knock on the door to assure his parents he wasn't walking alone.

His mother's smiling face greeted her.

Marinette's greeting in return was quiet, barely-there, and she felt incredibly out of place when Adrien came bounding down the stairs, dressed head-to-toe in an outfit that he never would've normally touched.

His mother gave them a lift to Nino's, saying that she'd feel better knowing they made it there okay.

Marinette didn't talk much on the ride.

Adrien spoke enough with his mother, expressing his excitement for the evening, going as far as to tell her that it was Marinette's first party.

Marinette had just nodded in confirmation to that, and she knew she would've felt even more awkward if she'd taken the front seat, as Adrien had offered.

When they got out the vehicle, Adrien waved at his mother until her car was too far away to see him any more. Marinette had thanked her quietly, not knowing what to say in returned when his mother had wished them both a good night, offering Marinette a lift back home later that evening.

"So," Adrien started, straightening out his clothing. "No need for the witch hat for you, I guess."

She smiled. "Bit late for that, isn't it?"

"True," he agreed, beaming. "You actually got a costume! And it looks—good. I mean, not that you _don't_ look good normally. The quality of the clothes is really... obvious? I look like I'm wearing rags next to you."

"You kind of are."

"I'm supposed to be a scarecrow," he retorted, putting his hands on his hips. "It was one of the last costumes in the store! I didn't have much choice, okay?"

She hummed. "Sure."

"And I couldn't find any face paint that didn't look awful," he continued to rant, gesturing to his blank face, hands moving along with his words. "I have to make do with what I've got, okay? I do _not_ deserve to be mocked for this."

"You look fine, Adrien," she interjected. "Does everyone dress up?"

"Well, no," he admitted, running a hand through his hair before pulling it away with a grimace. There was some sort of product in it, making it look wet from her distance. "But I like to do it, you know? I think it's fun. And with you by my side, I won't look like such a dork."

Her brow furrowed. "You told me to dress up—all of you did."

"Because we're good friends," Adrien proclaimed, grinning. "You'll see everyone else only wears, like, a headband with ears or something. They'll look really lame in comparison."

"I didn't realise we'd... stand out," she slowly said, reaching down and putting her hand on top of her sheathed blade. "How many people will be here?"

"Not that many," Adrien assured her, gesturing for her to follow him up to the front door. The closer they got, the easier it was the hear the music coming from inside. "There'll be some from other years, so it won't just be our class."

She decided against harming any of them that night to see if they were a demon.

It was easy to pass it off as clumsiness at school, but she didn't want to draw any unwanted attention from Nino's parents because she hurt someone else.

The music was louder inside.

Nino's parents were in the kitchen, handing out drinks and offering food to anyone that wandered in, and Adrien dragged her to see them first, saying hi and thanking them for the invite.

The upstairs was off-limits.

The door to the toilet downstairs had a piece of paper stuck on it, making it clear that it was meant to be used, and it was the living room and garden where everyone had gathered.

There was less people than it her biggest class.

She recognised most of them, had never really interacted with them, and Adrien had grabbed onto her wrist to pull her through, going out to the garden to find Nino, Alya, and a few others sat on the patio chairs.

"Dude!" Nino exclaimed, grinning. "You look—"

"Great?" Adrien supplied, striking a pose.

Alya snickered. "If you want to use that word, sure."

It was loud.

Marinette stayed quiet a lot of the time. For the most part, Adrien, Alya, and Nino stayed outside on the patio with the door open, allowing others to come out and talk to them as they saw fit. A hand-knitted blanket was shared between both Alya and Nino—who were wearing face paint, but she couldn't see their full outfits—and Marinette started to regret not wearing a jacket after some time.

Adrien noticed her shivering.

"Want to go inside for a bit?" he offered, gesturing with his thumb towards the door. "We could grab something to eat."

She nodded.

More than ever, it felt like she was an outsider. There wasn't much point to being social, let alone introducing herself to everyone that came over when she had no intention of talking to them if they happened to bump into each other at school.

She let the others do the talking.

He put a few snacks into a bowl, sitting down at one of the seats at the dining table and waited for her to take the one beside her with a patient smile.

The music had slowly been turning down as the time passed. Nino's parents had gone outside to talk to him and Alya, the laughter audible from the other room. Instead of the wild parties that she saw in films, it was small groups of people talking, sipping on their drinks and having a tame evening.

It wasn't the teenage party that she'd ever seen portrayed.

"You're quiet," Adrien observed, setting the bowl down between them.

With the hairband on her wrist, she tied her hair up in a high ponytail, using her fingers to smooth out the lumps. "There's a lot of people."

"You're quiet when it's the four of us," he pointed out, fiddling with his sleeve.

She raised her eyebrows. "Still a lot of people."

"You're—not comfortable with even that many?" he quietly asked, shifting on his chair until he was sitting on it sideways, angled towards her. "After so long?"

"I'm not good with lots of people," Marinette replied, honest. "It's... unfamiliar to me? I only really—well, hang out with one person, and I don't feel comfortable enough to talk when there's so many around, speaking all at once."

He frowned. "I care about what you have to say."

"Do you?" she queried, trying to make sense of his expression.

"Yes," he insisted. "Why wouldn't I?"

"I was under the impression you befriended me out of obligation," she remarked, loosening her ponytail a bit before being satisfied with the result. "From me saving you and Alya's... pity."

He shot that down immediately. "It's not pity."

Marinette shrugged. "Whatever it may be, it's misplaced."

"She likes you," Adrien declared. "And Nino does, too. He think you're pretty cool under all your shyness."

Again, she asked, "And do you?"

"Me?" Adrien seemed surprised. "I—would I be here if I didn't?"

"I think you wouldn't be here if I didn't bring attention to myself," she mused, feeling a slight bitterness to her words that hadn't been there before. "You—I never got a second glance before, did I?"

"You can't blame me for that," he blurted, wide-eyed. "I didn't even remember what you looked like—"

She shook her head. "It's fine, I know that."

His voice was quiet. "Why did you say it, then?"

There was a lull in their conversation.

Marinette swallowed. "I don't know."

"Oh," he whispered, visibly befuddled by that.

The music filled the silence between them. Adrien nervously picked at the food, barely eating, and Marinette hadn't touched any. She'd eaten before she'd gotten dressed, not wanting to rely on the food supplied when she wasn't sure what the party would really be like.

She was glad she ate.

"After this," she started, wetting her lips. "When you're home, I'm going somewhere else."

Curious, he questioned, "Got a wild night planned?"

"Maybe," Marinette vaguely replied. "Chloé's convinced me to go to a club with her, but I'm not convinced we're getting in with me looking like this."

Adrien glanced at her outfit. "Is that why you're dressed like that?"

"She bought it," she answered. "So, yes, probably. Can't exactly turn up dressed like a scarecrow and expect to get into a club, I suppose."

"I wouldn't get in because of my youthful looks, thank you," he said with a dramatic flourish as he put his elbow on the arm of the chair, resting his chin in his palm. "Good luck getting in to you."

Honest, she told him, "I'm expecting some bribery to happen."

He laughed. "For real?"

"Demons have no standards," she replied.

His smile dimmed at that. "Will there be... others?"

"Probably," Marinette said, patting the sheath against her thigh. "That's why I'm bringing this along. Better to be prepared than end up with broken ribs."

"Wait—" Adrien choked out, sitting upright. "That's—that's real?"

She kept her hand on it. "Yes."

"And you brought it _here_?"

"I always have it on me," she calmly replied, amused by his panicked reaction. "Even at school. It's usually hidden around my waist, but I couldn't exactly do that with this outfit."

His expression was horrified. "You—you have that on you?"

"Yes," she reiterated, glancing to see whether anyone else was in the kitchen was them. "It's what I use to kill demons."

He swallowed. "Marinette—"

"I'm not going to use it on anyone with no reason, if that's what you're worrying about," she interrupted, crossing her arms. "I didn't tell you that to freak you out."

"It's—it's just hard to come to terms with," he stuttered out, running a hand through his hair that still looked damp from the product. "I forget that we're so different sometimes, you know? Then, this happens and I... I realise that I'm a kid compared to you."

She blinked. "I'm a kid, too."

"Yes, but..." he trailed off, brow furrowing as his gaze flickered down to the covered blade again. "I'm barely trusted with a knife to cut vegetables, and you're—you're out here slashing people up."

Marinette scoffed. "They're hardly people."

Confused, he pointed out, "You're, like, best friends with one."

"That gives me the right to say that, right?" She grinned. "If you expect me to feel sorry about it, I don't. And if you were smart, you wouldn't either."

Her shifted in his seat. "I still find it far-fetched—"

"You've seen them with your own eyes," she butted in.

"How are you sane?" he blurted, looking at her with wide eyes. "After—after seeing all of that? I keep seeing it when I close my eyes, but you're... it seems like nothing has changed for you."

She bluntly replied, "All that changed is that you know."

He sounded as frustrated as he looked. "How is that _all_?"

"Your life is your parents and passing school," she quietly started, gesturing back and forth between them. "But I—I've _never_ had that. What I have now is the most stable my life has ever been, and in your eyes, I murder someone weekly, at least."

He wetted his lips. "It just doesn't seem real to me."

"It took me a while," she admitted softly, glancing up again as someone she barely knew darted in to grab some snacks. "Believe me, I was terrified the first time I came across one. I had no idea what I was doing, and suddenly someone was up on a roof _beside_ me."

Adrien met her gaze. "And that didn't stop you? It didn't scare you away from this?"

Her smile didn't reach her eyes. "I had no choice."

"There's no choice," he started, eyes looking down to her blade. "And then there's... befriending them."

Incredulous, Marinette asked, "Are being judgemental right now?"

"A bit," he admitted, ducking his head and avoiding her gaze. "I just—I don't understand."

"No, you don't," she confirmed, voice coming out neutral instead of displaying the anger that had started to bubble inside of her. "You're alive because of me, so why won't you stop being high and mighty?"

"Marinette—"

"You can think I'm a bad person," she interrupted, standing up and causing her chair to make noise as it moved. "You're absolutely welcome to think I'm a monster, but you don't get to pretend to be my friend and lecture me when I'm the only reason that you're breathing right now."

He scrambled to stand up with her, blurting out, "That's not—"

"You're scared, that's fine," Marinette stated, looking him in the eye. "I'm doing this for _you_. I'm doing what I have to, but a bit of trust would be nice."

"Marinette!" he exclaimed, close to a shout. "I'm sorry, it was a poor choice of words—"

"I'm going outside," she said, not letting him finish. "I'll make sure you get home safely."

She ignored the buzzing of her phone when she saw his name pop up.

Marinette knew that she was overreacting.

Adrien wasn't saying anything new; him questioning whether she should really be around a demon, let alone befriend one, was something she'd constantly asked herself.

Chloé had saved her life.

She'd saved her, surely more than once by dragging her body back to the apartment and letting her stay in her bed to recover, no matter how unlikely it had been, and Marinette had never thought that would ever happen.

They'd barely said that they were friends at all.

She knew there'd be a time where she'd have to choose—if Chloé ever caught wind of Adrien, knew what he was, she doubted that she'd be able to talk Chloé out of killing him.

Power was everything to them.

And to Marinette, Adrien was that to her.

He was all she was living for, wasn't he?

If she had no purpose, if he _died—_

She wouldn't know what to do.

When his mother's car pulled up, Marinette sent a text, apologising for blowing up at him.

He apologised back.

It was civil.

He made it home safely, bedroom light turning on, and Marinette leaned against a nearby fence as she text Chloé to ask her where she wanted to meet up to go out.

The answer to that was further in the city, towards the shadier part.

That wasn't much of a surprise.

When she got there, Chloé was smoking a cigarette, make-up more dramatic than usual, and her outfit was bordering on the verge of scandalous.

"You'll trick someone into thinking you're a prostitute soon," Marinette said as her form of greeting, holding up a hand to wave as Chloé glared at her. "The street corner isn't doing you any favours."

Chloé threw the cigarette on the ground with a huff. "Shut up, fetus."

"You're in a good mood," she remarked.

"You're late," Chloé accused.

Marinette blinked. "You didn't give me a time."

"So?" Chloé brushed her hair over her shoulder, straightening up and adjusting her outfit, going as far as to move her breast with her hand, proving that she wasn't wearing a brassiere. "I was going to ditch you soon."

"Sure," she replied, amused. "Where are we going, then?"

"Somewhere," Chloé responded vaguely. Then, she closed the distance between them, tugging Marinette's hair out of the ponytail and fluffing it with her fingers, trying to make it look presentable. "You look childish with your hair up, it shows your face too much."

Marinette shot her a flat look.

Chloé glowered right back.

Their destination didn't look too seedy.

It was when they waited in line for a few minutes, slowly walking up to the bouncer that was checking identifications, that Chloé leaned down to whisper, "It's a demon nightclub."

She stomped on her foot.

Chloé shoved her.

"You tell me that _now_?" she demanded.

"Don't be a pussy," Chloé retorted, rolling her eyes. "It's not a big deal. You'll see."

When they came to the front of the queue, the bouncer looked her in the eyes while checking her card before looking at Chloé, a frown very present on their face.

Chloé was practically beaming.

They got in, somehow.

"See? No problem," Chloé proclaimed, linking their arms and dragging Marinette inside. "If you see anything—well, not appropriate for your virgin eyes, just look away."

"Great advice," she deadpanned.

It didn't seem that different to what she'd seen on television; dim lighting, even louder music than at Nino's, with people clumsily dancing and swarming the bar, trying to flag down the bartender to get a drink.

All she could think was that it didn't scream demon.

As it turned out, Chloé meant that the owners were her kind. Two of the bartenders were human, and most of the guests were, too. It wasn't some strange place that was solely meant for demons and the humans they dragged with them; rather, Chloé said it was a good place for gossip and information if she was confident enough to enter and draw attention to herself.

For Chloé to step in with one heart—close to the lowest amount of strength possible for a demon—meant that there was a lot of unsaid trust between them.

"How the hell did I get in with _this_?" Marinette asked, gesturing to the blade strapped to her thigh.

Chloé laughed. "Because of me, idiot. Bouncer's one of me."

That didn't explain _anything_.

Neither of them got alcohol.

"I don't want to piss every two minutes for the tiny buzz," Chloé explained away. "The toilets here are probably gross. Let's avoid that."

The nightclub was less about talking than it had been at Nino's.

"I've got a good idea," Chloé murmured, leaning closer so Marinette could hear her. "Follow my lead, yeah?"

Chloé dragged her to dance.

She stood there awkwardly, squished between people that were so much older than her—taller, too, with various different outfits that were either scandalous or meant to be costumes—and felt entirely too awkward to be there.

And when Chloé noticed that, she laughed, the loud barely audible over the music as she tipped her head back and laughed with her whole body, finding Marinette's discomfort as amusement.

Chloé leaned down to say into her ear, "Copy me, remember?"

That wasn't reassuring at all.

Rather than dancing with her, Chloé turned her attention to someone who was clearly drunk beside her; sliding beside him with her intent clear, smiling a tad too wide and swaying her hips to get his attention, and it turned entirely too indecent in a matter of moments.

Marinette felt more out of place than ever.

She moved through the crowd, wanting to get _away—_to be somewhere she felt more secure, not squashed in the middle of adults.

But she was there for a reason, wasn't she?

Chloé was taking a risk being there—being exposed to other demons, making it known that she was there was like asking for someone to kill her, wasn't it?

She found an empty spot by the wall, leaning against it and taking deep breaths, and it was some minutes later that Chloé sauntered over to her.

Her lipstick was a bit smudged.

Marinette openly frowned at that. "Had fun?"

"You would've, too, if you stuck around," Chloé said as her greeting, running her fingers through her hair and straightening out her outfit, one hand behind her back. "You don't think you're here to lose your virginity or some shit, do you?"

She choked out an incredulous laugh. "_No_."

"This is mutually beneficial," Chloé replied, revealing the hand she'd had hidden to show a wallet, taking the cash out and putting it in her own before tossing the wallet to floor. "Let's make a game of it, yeah?"

Surprised, all she could say was, "What?"

Chloé rolled her eyes. "You're surrounded by drunks that are only going to get worse as the night progresses. Why _wouldn't_ you take advantage of that?"

And so, she did.

It was unexpectedly fun.

Far too uncomfortable to do what Chloé did, Marinette swiped a few wallets by making her way through, either swiping from someone that was obviously intoxicated, or beating Chloé to it when she was busy dancing with someone.

There was a point where Chloé had stopped her, reaching out and taking Marinette's wrist while shaking her head before pointing between her and the person Marinette had been planning to go to, as if trying to get the a message across silently.

All that happened was that Marinette looked at her in confusion.

With a sigh, Chloé leaned down to state, "Demon."

That was all the explanation she needed for that.

When Chloé went to buy a drink, Marinette got a text from her.

A man on the other end of the bar was pointed out, outfit described, and she was given a vague level of his power.

Marinette wondered whether he was the reason they were there.

Chloé did exchange a look with him, but there wasn't any conversation.

In the two hours it took for the man to leave.

He died in his apartment.

Marinette swiped his wallet and added it to her bag that was significantly more full than when the evening started, raided his fridge and stole some of his food to eat on her way back, and simply sent Chloé an emoji of a thumbs up to tell her that she'd done it.

And as she started chewing her last mouthful of food, she sent Adrien a text to say that she was going home.

He responded within the first minute, telling her to be safe.

She looked down at the blood on her white shirt.

It wasn't hers.

-x-

"Clearly, we have different morals," Adrien started, sitting across from her at the lunch table. "I don't want to fight you because of that. It's—it's not my place to jump to conclusions, but I just don't think before I speak sometimes. At least, that's what my mother says."

"I know," she confirmed, unscrewing the cap of her bottle to take a sip of her drink. "To the morals part. I've already realised that."

He blinked. "Oh."

Marinette shrugged. "I'm not mad at you."

"That's... good," he slowly said. "I'm not mad at you either."

With a glance up, she met Alya's eyes from where she and Nino were in the queue to buy lunch. Alya waved happily, going as far as to hold up Nino's hand to do the same.

"I like you guys," Marinette softly admitted. "You're annoying sometimes, but I think you're all pretty funny."

Adrien laughed loudly. "Annoying?"

"Alya was," she clarified. "While she was being very persistent."

"Oh, back when you were being incognito," he remarked, nodding his head in agreement. "I'm glad you find us funny. That's probably as much of a confession of friendship that I'm going to get from you, isn't?"

Honest, she replied, "I don't have many friends."

"You've got us," Adrien quietly told her, looking into her eyes. "For real, if—if you ever want to talk you can come to me, or even Alya if it's something normal. She'd be overjoyed at that."

She queried, "Why would she be?"

"Because," he started, glancing to the side to see where the other two were. "She really considers you a friend, you know? But you're—it's not that you're pushing us away, but you don't want to do the normal things with us."

Marinette pointed out, "I've got other priorities."

"Your grandfather, yeah." He frowned, pausing. "I don't think that excuse is going to work forever."

"I check on you to make sure you're safe, but at the weekends I have stuff to do," she replied, taking another sip of her drink. "Weekdays are fine, but you're rarely together then."

Adrien sighed. "Because of school."

She shrugged. "I can come in the mornings, maybe, but you usually sleep in until the afternoon when you can."

He looked at her in surprise. "You know that?"

Marinette grinned. "I know a lot."

"Right, yeah," he said, running a hand through his hair. "You're a certified stalker, I forgot about that."

"It's my job to know everything about you," she told him bluntly.

"Okay," he agreed, not putting up a fight. "I get it, I do. That's why I let you reinstall that location app, but it's—it's still jarring, you know? You know so much while I know barely anything about you."

She swallowed. "You can ask."

"I can?" he questioned, surprised. "Really?"

"I don't see why not," she replied, pausing to take a bite of her food and chew for longer than necessary. And when she glanced back up, he was still looking at her, expecting an answer. "You can ask me whatever you want. I won't laugh, if that's what you're worried about."

Alya and Nino came back with their food.

They arranged to meet up that weekend.

Alya promised to call Adrien until he woke up at an appropriate time when Marinette revealed that she had plans in the late afternoon.

The questions started when they were alone.

Adrien asked her what she liked to do in her free time, to which she'd given a non-committal answer to.

He wasn't happy that she hadn't finished the comic he gave her yet.

Marinette admitted that she'd read two pages, but she'd gotten distracted.

It started off with the simple stuff; her favourite food—which had made him laugh when she pointed out that she didn't know his—colour and her favourite holiday, all the things that she expected Alya to spring on her out of the blue.

Alya, however, had taken a different route with her interest.

"How's your grandfather?" she asked, completely out of the blue in one of their classes together.

Adrien was there, too, but he was seated beside across the room, and Nino was in another class.

"Fine?" Marinette replied, surprised. "Why?"

"Curious," Alya responded, pushing her spectacles up with one finger. "He's not, like, super old-fashioned, is he? Because I've noticed that your skirt is almost at your knees, unlike everyone else's."

She blinked. "This is how it came."

"I roll mine up," Alya answered, lifting up her shirt to show the covered waistband.

"I don't really care about fashion," Marinette bluntly explained, gesturing to her uniform that didn't stand out. She hadn't added any buttons, and the hoodie she wore as a jacket was black, not bright-coloured or meant to be a fashion statement. "And I'm not about to undo two buttons to show off my bra for no reason."

Alya laughed. "No?"

"Not interested," she replied with a shrug. "Plus, your skirt's longer at the front than it is at the back."

"Shit, is it?" Alya questioned, standing up and peering down at the article of clothing, trying to see whether it was true. She fiddled with it for a bit, barely making a difference, before looking at Marinette and asking, "How about now?"

The response she gave was raising her eyebrows.

Alya sighed. "Okay, this probably looks pretty bad, but I think it's cuter than having it almost reach my knees, you know?"

Marinette scribbled an answer down on her paper. "I don't know, but okay."

"Sometimes, I think you just care about your hair," Alya said.

That was a surprise. "My hair?"

"Yeah, dude," Alya confirmed, gesturing to where the dark strands were contained in a high ponytail to stay out of the way. "It's always real shiny or whatever. You clearly take care of it."

Marinette didn't correct her on that.

It was understandable that her class-mates were taking care of their appearances. The majority of them were fifteen, some already having turned sixteen since the term had started, and it was their last year in that school before they applied somewhere else.

From what she knew from overhearing gossip, a few were in relationships with each other—such as Alya and Nino, but Marinette had joined after that couple had already been established—but she'd never cared much about the information.

There wasn't any reason to—it didn't help her in the long run, and knowing it did nothing for her life.

All that it would change was that if Adrien dated anyone, he'd spend time at their house.

Marinette had to hope it wasn't in an apartment building where it would be harder to keep an eye on him.

When they were walking home, she brought it up. "Are you planning on dating anyone?"

He made a choking noise. "What?"

She repeated the question.

"You don't—you don't plan that," he lamely replied, reaching up and running a hand through his hair before leaving it at the nape of his neck. "It just kind of happens, doesn't it? But no, I don't like anyone right now."

"Okay," Marinette answered, leaving it at that.

However, that wasn't good enough for him.

"Why?" he questioned.

She simply told him, "I needed to know."

"But _why_?" he persisted.

"Because it matters," Marinette replied, brow furrowing from how emotional his reaction seemed. "It would mean you'd spend time elsewhere, yes? And I'd need to incorporate that into my routine. I was wondering because you've been taking care of your appearance lately."

Adrien spluttered, "I'm sorry, what?"

"You're brushing your hair more," she said.

He touched his hair again, looking at her with wide eyes.

She smiled.

Marinette didn't change her routine; she continued to dress comfortably, concealing the blade underneath her clothing by either wearing oversized t-shirts paired with shorts, or staying in her school uniform in the evenings. The blazer was forgotten for the most part, the crest of the school not displayed on the rest of the outfit.

She didn't dabble in make-up for more than covering bruises, didn't roll her skirt up to be shorter, and the only upgrade from what she'd been wearing since her first year at the school was the quality of her shoes from Chloé's insistence.

Seeing the three in their casual clothes proved that they put more effort in their outfits than she did.

"Marinette!" Alya greeted, waving her arm around excitedly, jumping on the spot. "You made it!"

"Yeah," she said in return, putting her hands into the pockets of her baggy jeans. They had a rip on the knee, something that Chloé had insisted looked good, and she'd opted for a sweater instead of wearing a coat. "Hey."

They all had coats on.

Alya even had a hat.

It was getting to the point where she'd need to wear gloves at night to stop her fingers from going numb, and they made her fumble with her bandalore and blade when she used them.

A trip to the nearest shopping centre was different when it wasn't with Chloé. She was still being dragged into stores, but they weren't the designer or higher-end ones that sold items because of the brand names.

Adrien's family was the richest of the three—she knew that much—but he wasn't turning his nose up at the cheaper stores, not like Chloé had.

And rather than going to a café, diner, or a restaurant to eat in, they gravitated more towards fast food, or snacks to eat along the way as they browsed between shops. The weather was cold, but Nino had a craving for a milkshake because his parents never let him have them—which he explained in his passionate monologue—and he'd roped the others into getting some, too.

When Adrien turned to her and asked whether she wanted one or not, she didn't see the harm in getting one.

"It's nice," she remarked, taking another sip. It was almost too thick to go through the straw and wasn't something that she would've usually ordered.

Marinette tended to go for the hotter drinks, especially the ones she could warm her hands up with outside.

Nino beamed at that.

After Adrien had bought a new charger for his phone, the question was directed at her. "Is there anything you need to buy?"

She sipped her drink thoughtfully.

All of her belongings had been moved from Fu's, the whole pitiful amount. Marinette had a cheap laptop, an expensive phone that she'd ended up throwing more money at Chloé for, and more than enough clothes that she didn't think she was going to get through any time soon.

Other than the pictures she'd kept, she didn't have that many personal belongings; no blankets she'd held onto for years, no hand-me-downs that had been entrusted to her from family members, and the official documents she'd gotten were completely forged a few years ago.

She cared about practically.

"More hairbands," was her response.

Alya steered her towards a particular store at that.

Marinette plucked up a pack of plain ones, only needing them to keep her hair out of reach so no demon could tug it and, perhaps, break her neck because of their strength.

"You don't want any prettier ones?" Alya questioned, gesturing to all the others on display.

"No, not really," she denied, pulling out her wallet from her pocket and getting ready to go to the till.

"No?" Alya asked, randomly picking up the nearest ones to her. "Not even these? They're a different colour to your hair—"

She hadn't noticed that Adrien and Nino had gone to a different store.

Instead of answering that, she queried, "Where'd they go?"

Alya gestured with her head to the store beside them. "Game store. We'll join 'em when we're done here."

"Okay," she said slowly. "But why?"

With a sigh, Alya responded, "I told them to."

"...That answers nothing, but okay," she replied, pointing behind her to the till. "I'll just buy these and we'll get going."

Alya didn't try and tempt her to buy anything else first.

Her purchase was slipped into her back pocket along with her wallet.

There was always the chance that someone would pickpocket her, but she liked to think that she was experienced enough to notice it.

It was how she made a living, after all.

Chloé always said that she should cover her face and threaten someone for their pin code to get money out of the bank, but Marinette didn't think that was necessary any time soon. The amount of wallets she'd stolen had added up nicely over the years, and she had enough cash to splurge and buy what she wanted on a whim.

It just so happened that she wasn't frivolous.

Unlike Chloé, the majority of her clothing wasn't designer, she didn't have to pay for a car, or any of the other expensive things associated with being an adult.

With Fu, she'd given him money as rent, and she'd started doing the same with Chloé since the summer.

Before they made it into the next store, Alya blurted out, "When's your birthday?"

She frowned. "Why?"

That wasn't the right answer, apparently.

"Because," Alya spluttered, incredulous. "It—it matters, doesn't it? We're throwing a party for Adrien at the end of the month."

The prospect of another party didn't seem enjoyable.

It was telling that she had more fun with Chloé. She'd been surrounded by strangers then, much like at Nino's party, but she hadn't shrunk into herself and barely spoke.

No one had paid any attention to her at the nightclub, hadn't cared that she was clearly underage, and she'd enjoyed the part where she'd stalked a demon before going home, even if it hadn't gotten Chloé any increase in power.

"Another?" she asked.

Her displeasure must've shown on her face because Alya was frowning as she clarified, "A birthday party."

Marinette questioned, "Is that so different to the last one?"

That wasn't the right thing to say either.

"To—to a Halloween one?" Alya asked, staring at her for moments on end, as though she was expecting her to laugh and say something in return. And when Marinette didn't say anything else, Alya scuffed her shoe against the floor and said, "Yeah, it is. It's more... personal? It's to celebrate a birthday, not an excuse to dress up and eat lots of candy."

She frowned right back at her. "I didn't eat lots of candy."

"Yeah, Adrien said," Alya muttered. "Birthday parties are for cake. And opening gifts."

It was a mistake to say, "I wouldn't know."

"You—" Alya stuttered out, wide-eyed. "You wouldn't know?"

Marinette shrugged. "Never had one."

"Why not?" Alya asked, sounding a bit strangled.

"Because I don't—I didn't have friends," she elaborated, pulling down the sleeve of her sweater to cover her hand. "Not a lot of point of having one when I don't _like_ anyone that would be invited, right?"

"Marinette," Alya started, raising a hand and almost reaching out to her before letting it fall to her side. "That's—"

"It's fine," she interrupted, gesturing towards the store. "Let's go in, yeah?"

Talking about her childhood, no matter how vaguely, never seemed to go over well.

-x-

Her bruises weren't healing quickly.

However, the cuts she'd acquired on her knees and palms from falling over were.

Marinette had started to jot down her injuries in her phone, listing where they were and when she got them, keeping track of how long it took to heal each and every one of them. They weren't life-threatening, just normal ones that she picked up along the way.

That was until her face scraped against the bricks of a building. One side of her face was cut up and bleeding, blood matted in her hair when she got back to Chloé's that evening, and it hurt when she so much as ate.

The cuts had halved in size by the morning.

She took pictures of the injuries.

Alya was the first one to spot her.

She looked horrified. "What happened?"

"Fell," Marinette replied, truthful. "It looks worse than it is."

"What did you fall against?" Alya persisted, holding onto the strap of her bag tightly.

She responded, "The wall."

It didn't make Alya's expression any better.

That conversation was repeated two more times with Adrien and Nino, and she was quite fed up by the end of it. It seemed that whenever she had a visible injury, they questioned it to no end, each asking the same question to her—as though they were expecting her to give a different answer.

It was only with Adrien that she added some more context.

"I did hit the wall," she insisted. "I rebounded into it and fell down last night."

He frowned. "You said you made it back fine."

"I'm alive, am I not?" she shot back, crossing her arms. "I'm not going to list every single one of my injuries to you when I go out. That'll get annoying."

"Being okay doesn't just mean living," he retorted. "I want to know because I care. I feel like you're not going to turn up at school one day and I'll find out later that you're actually dead."

A choked laugh escaped her at that. "Yeah, that might not happen."

"Might _not_?"

"I have a theory," she started, excited at the prospect of someone else listening to it. Chloé always insisted that she needed to break a bone to test it fully. "I think I might—well, not be normal."

He was giving her a strange look.

"What?" she questioned.

Adrien swallowed. "I don't think you're normal at all, not compared to the rest of us."

Marinette laughed loudly. "No, I know that. I meant differently."

"Right." He didn't sound convinced. "What's this theory, then?"

"It's a bit... out there?" she replied, reaching up and pushing some stray hairs behind her ear. "I got, like, really injured over the summer—and I mean _real_ injured—but I healed right up without much assistance. So, I've been recording my—"

Adrien exclaimed, "You said it wasn't serious!"

She blinked. "Eh?"

"You said that—that it wasn't that serious," he babbled, talking in a rush. "Over the summer, when you couldn't reply? You said that it _wasn't_ serious."

There was an uncomfortable feeling in her stomach.

"Yeah..." Marinette trailed off with a grimace. "About that, I might've lied."

He sounded as frazzled as he looked. "_Why_?"

"I didn't see the point of telling you," she bluntly replied. "But now? I have a reason to."

"Because you want my opinion on this—this insane theory you've come up with?" Adrien retorted, throwing his hands up in the air. "You're only telling me because you want something, not because I deserve to know if you're injured."

She nodded. "Yes."

"Don't just—you're not supposed to agree to that!" he responded sharply, falling to a stop as they reached the end of his street. "I'm supposed to mean something to you, right?"

Marinette tilted her head, quizzical. "You're everything to me."

Adrien visibly struggled for words before asking quietly, "Then—then why would you keep that a secret?"

"You knowing wouldn't have done anything," she replied, pulling her sleeve over her hand. "I wanted to avoid this."

Incredulous, he asked, "You wanted to avoid me... caring?"

Her brow furrowed. "Is that so bad?"

"Is me caring bad?" he shot back.

"Yes," Marinette retorted, gesturing towards him. "There's no point in getting upset when it's in the past. It's done, I'm fine, and I only brought it up because I wanted to see whether you've noticed anything."

Adrien was still frowning. "I've noticed that you're really detached about the worst things."

"And I think you're making a big deal out of nothing, but okay."

"Marinette," he started slowly, taking a step towards her. "If I got injured and didn't tell you, how would you react?"

"I'd want to know how," she responded. "To know if it was my fault that it happened."

She could see it as he took in a deep breath. "Not because—because you don't like me being hurt?"

"That, too," she confirmed. "You're not supposed to get hurt if I'm around."

"But let's say I did," he said. "And it was something totally normal, not related to demons at all. What if I fell and—I don't know—sprained my ankle?"

"I'd still want to know," she repeated, glancing down at his very okay feet. "I'd have to factor that in when figuring out when you'd get home."

He breathed out audibly. "So, you care about me."

She shot him an unimpressed look. "That's why you're alive, yes."

"I want to know if you're hurt," he stressed, their shoes almost touching from their close distance. "We may not be the closest, but I do care about you. I want to know about you, remember?"

"I was trying to tell you before you freaked out—"

"For a good reason," he interrupted, shooting her a disapproving look. "You can't just drop it on me that you were really hurt when you played it off like nothing happened."

Marinette mirrored his expression. "Well, I was going to tell you more before you stopped me."

"Oh, sure, tell me all about you being too injured to talk to me over the summer," he grumbled, clearly not happy with her response. "You're not going to give me a heart attack or anything."

"You wouldn't have a heart attack," she pointed out.

He sounded thoroughly exasperated as he threw his hands up. "It's an expression!"

"Well, it's stupid," she muttered, taking a step back to lean on a nearby fence. It wasn't tall or sturdy enough to sit on. "Basically, my bones healed properly without being reset. Oh, and I also didn't go to a hospital, so there's that."

He looked at her blankly. "Come again?"

Marinette sighed.

She talked him through it; explaining the injuries but not how she got them. Marinette told him how she'd recovered in Chloé's bed, mostly out of it from the drugs she'd been given, and how she hadn't had a cast, sling, or anything beyond the basic first aid kit that Chloé had purchased on a whim to try and help her.

Adrien's expression never stopped looking horrified.

He was pale, swallowing far too much, and even quietly said, "Tell me you're joking."

"I'm not," Marinette responded, taking out her phone and opening up her gallery.

All she had were pictures of herself, but they weren't the usual type that would make it on social media for everyone else.

"These have been from the past two weeks," she clarified before turning it around for him to see bloody scrape across her face on the screen. "And this was last night's. It doesn't heal that quickly for you, right?"

He cleared his throat. "No."

"Okay," Marinette said with a nod, pleased with the response.

She didn't show him any more of the pictures, not when they'd mostly healed and only bruises remained afterwards.

Adrien did ask, "Do you take pictures every time?"

"Recently," she replied. "Trying to prove my theory, you know? I thought it would be better than breaking my hand and documenting the results."

He made a strangled not. "You're not—you're not going to do that, right?"

"No." She gave him an odd look. "That would be pretty stupid."

"Right," he repeated, sounding a bit breathless as he ran a hand through his hair. "Stupid, yes, that's the stupid part."

She took in his pale complexion, the way he was touching the nape of neck, and how he was avoiding looking into her eyes.

It was clear that he was uncomfortable.

"I won't bring it up again, if you want," she offered, putting her phone back into her pocket. "You look like you're going to throw up."

In response to that, he blurted out, "I've only broken my arm before."

Marinette said, "I broke mine for the first time in the summer."

"First time?" he questioned.

"I never had any bad injuries before," she explained with a shrug, putting her hands into the pockets of her jacket. "Bruises and some pretty bad colds, sure, but I never got into any fights—well, not before I got a way to defend myself."

He swallowed. "The weapons."

"Yeah, them," she replied with a small smile. "They've broken everyone else's bones, not mine."

Adrien sounded hesitant as he asked, "What do you mean?"

And when he learned about Kim—when the other homeless boy had used her bandalore and broken his bones and died—he looked like he was going to throw up again.

By the time Adrien's birthday came, her bruises had faded to a yellow that she covered up with the make-up Chloé had picked out for her. Marinette wasn't the best at applying it, but it was better than having the teachers look at her face and exposed skin in concern whenever she turned up with more of them.

Make-up couldn't cover up scabs, though.

Once upon a time, she remembered sending Adrien a card from her and Aloys.

This time, she picked the least offensive-looking one in the store.

Alya had given her all the details of the party, texting her more often than usual, keeping her up-to-date and adding her to a group chat with her and Nino so they could sort it all out. It was strange at first to have her phone buzzing often from someone that wasn't Adrien—Alya and Nino had never really text her that much with her old phone—but she grew used to it.

They were used to her not responding instantly, or when she did, her messages were short and straight to the point.

Marinette wasn't like Adrien and didn't use a load of emojis.

Nino liked to send pictures as his reactions sometimes.

Alya had arranged it all with Adrien's parents; it wouldn't be a party with as many people as last time—despite them telling her that wasn't _that_ many in the first place—since his parents weren't on board with hosting the majority of the class at their home. She knew from overhearing and listening to Adrien directly that his home was neat, that his father liked to clean almost daily, and she expected having dozens of children round was probably their worst nightmare.

She was surprised when the small affair turned out to be only the four of them.

Adrien's mother had given him a lift home, taking him to pick up the birthday cake and other things to give them time to set up the house with his father.

That meeting was awkward.

Adrien's father was tall, thin, and the streaks of grey in his hair stood out against the stark blond which was a lot lighter than his son's. There wasn't much familial resemblance there.

None of them were tall enough to put a banner on the wall without needing a chair, and Adrien's father protested that, claiming that it would leave a mark on the carpet.

Marinette stayed quiet.

The whole preparation was foreign to her. She'd seen things on the television, sure, but she didn't know how well they'd translate into real life. The party she'd attended before hadn't been very realistically portrayed there, though the club one was quite similar.

When she'd been told it was a demon club, she'd been expecting a lot worse.

It was a bit of a let-down, really.

The floor was covered in balloons. Some of them were floating—the bigger ones with a more colourful design—and they'd each been giving a party popper to use when Adrien walked through the door.

She'd never used one before.

Alya gestured for her to hold onto the string with an encouraging smile.

Nino ended up popping his all over Adrien's mother as she'd come through the front door first.

Adrien's father laughed loudly.

It was a more personal event. There was music playing quietly, drinks passed out to each of them, and they were all ushered into the living room to sit down as Adrien opened his presents.

She felt entirely out of place.

Adrien's mother had a camera the whole time, taking pictures and asking them to smile and pose.

Marinette hadn't had her picture taken with Adrien for years, and that was a jarring thought.

When it came time for her to give him his card, Adrien looked pleasantly surprised at being given anything at all. It had been instilled in her from Alya _and_ Nino that birthdays were about being there, not how much money could be spent on a gift.

She hadn't bought him one.

And from the smile he gave her, he didn't mind one bit.

The card was put with the others on top of the fireplace.

Marinette liked the cake.

And when she left, she was given another slice, wrapped up in a napkin and covered in cling film for her to eat later.

She sent a text to Adrien saying that she'd give him his present later.

The emojis that she got in response didn't surprise her any more.

There was a lot of things that were consistent about Adrien; how much he cared for others, how he typed, and how much he hated certain classes.

She was just learning a lot more since actually talking to him.

Chloé punched a hole through a demon's chest that evening, gaining their power and breaking her hand for less than a minute, and Marinette had sustained minimal injuries. It was a safe run in comparison to the other ones, but when she sent the message to Adrien saying that she was fine and going home, he asked her whether she'd taken any pictures.

It took her a moment to realise that he meant of her injuries.

She showed him the scrapes on her knuckles.

He sent an angry emoji back.

It made her laugh.

That was the gateway for him asking to see them, to be a second pair of eyes—ignoring when she said she already had Chloé doing that for her—and he said that he was willing to help as long as she didn't show him any bones sticking out from her skin.

Marinette replied that she'd never seen hers do that.

It took a few minutes for him to ask if she'd seen anyone else's, no emojis attached.

That shouldn't have been endearing, but it kind of was. It was easy to tell with Adrien when he was being serious, or when something was wrong with his mood; even on social media, he attached emojis to his messages, whether they were a full sentence or a single word.

She said that she'd seen a lot of things.

Adrien pressed her for more.

She replied that he had to be more specific.

He gave up and went to sleep.

But the questions didn't stop there.

Adrien continued to try and get to know her; bringing up random topics and asking her about them, questioning whether she'd celebrated any holidays, and asking what she'd like for Christmas.

She blanked on that.

It reminded her that she hadn't given Adrien his gift yet.

She wasn't completely sure whether it was a good idea, or if it was wise in the first place, so she'd been putting it off. Adrien hadn't pestered her about it, but it was close to two weeks later and he hadn't so much as questioned it.

Sending him a text, she asked him whether he still wanted his present.

He replied with an affirmative.

They arranged to meet up the next day.

Without her waking him up, Adrien was ready to leave by the time she made it to his house before noon. He'd brushed his hair in a rush, as half of it was still sticking out, and his shirt was wrinkled from what she could see underneath his jacket.

He wisely slipped on a hat while greeting her with a surprisingly peppy, "Hey! You're here."

Marinette gave a half-hearted wave. "I did say so, yeah."

"What are we doing?" he questioned, pausing at the end of his driveway to lean down and retie his shoelaces so they weren't so loose. "You said you've got something to give me?"

"Maybe," she replied, putting her hands in her pockets, pretending that she didn't see Adrien's mother peering out of the window at the two of them. "I'm not completely sold on the idea yet, so I thought I'd run through it with you."

Adrien asked, "I have to pass a test to get my birthday present?"

"Let's not class it as a present, then," she proposed. "It's just a gift in general, yeah?"

He didn't look convinced. "Sure."

They didn't have a set destination in mind, so it resulted in the two of them wandering nearby, going to a park, and Adrien was excited when he saw that a pair of swings were free, quickly ushering her over there with him.

He was happy to just sit on it, not moving enough for his feet to get off of the ground, but he was swaying back and forth.

"So," she started, eyeing the children that were playing across the park with their parents. "Do you remember anything from your sword lessons?"

He looked at her strangely. "Eh?"

"With your grandfather," she clarified, curling her hands around the chains of the swing, still staying in place. "You used to join his class, remember? And I took your place after you left."

"Oh," Adrien breathed. "I don't remember that much, to be honest. I think I know more about ballet, and I only did that the next summer before I got bored of it."

Her expression fell at that. "Really?"

"Yeah," he said. "My parents always used to sign me up for new classes to try and give me _productive_ stuff to do, you know?"

She didn't know.

"It was a bit stupid to expect you to remember that long ago, right?" she muttered, a bit bitter at the revelation.

It wasn't as though she remember it all—the moves she executed with her blade were purely luck, and didn't have much skill behind them when she had to have her enemy bound or critically injured to stand a chance at winning.

She remembered to be active, though.

"Why?" Adrien asked.

"There's another one of these," she admitted, putting one hand down to touch the top of her thigh where her blade was resting underneath. "A sword, I mean. It's another one of the weapons that your grandfather left behind me."

His brow furrowed. "Just—how many are there? They keep adding up."

Marinette smiled. "Two, unless you count a pair of swords as separate."

"So, you..." Adrien trailed off, glancing down to where her hand was, but he was unable to see it through her clothing. "You wanted to give me the other one?"

"It would be good to defend yourself," she explained, going back to holding on the chains, putting her weight back a little to make the swing move slightly. "There's not much of a chance of you really being able to do much with it, I think, but it would be better than nothing."

Adrien wetted his lips. "What are they like?"

Marinette gestured to the rest of the park. "I don't think I can show you here."

"Okay," he agreed. "Where to, then?"

She blinked.

"Where can we go?" Adrien asked, clearly not wanting to drop the subject. "Even if you're not going to entrust me with one, I'd still—I'd like to see what my grandfather was protecting, you know? I never really saw much of it before."

"I don't know where to go without it seeming like we're in the middle of a shady drug deal," Marinette admitted. "We can't go back to where I'm staying, and turning up at Fu—I mean, my grandfather's isn't an option."

"Your grandfather not wanting visitors?" he questioned. "I never called him. I... don't think I want to any more."

Marinette averted her gaze, looking down at her shoes as she admitted, "I haven't spoken to him since school started."

He made a curious noise. "You haven't?"

"No reason to now I'm not living with him, you know?" she replied, scuffing her heel against the floor. "And it's not like he'd want to hear about what happened."

"I would," Adrien offered. "If you—if you ever want to talk about anything, I'm here, remember?"

The sincerity was there in his voice.

Adrien cared.

That was how she explained what had really happened in the summer; from the beach trip to them traipsing through the woods, unaware that anything bad was going to happen. Marinette didn't look at him as she whispered how Chloé had pushed her to the side, hard enough to break her ribs from the contact, or how she'd looked up and Chloé's eyes were gouged out—

It came out in a rush.

Adrien stayed quiet the entire time.

He wasn't swinging any more.

Marinette's feet were firmly on the floor, hands holding onto the chains tightly.

And when she was finished, had told him that she was living with Chloé to help her regain her power and make sure she was safe and repaying the debt, Adrien didn't say anything.

Instead, he stood up and offered a hand out to her.

Marinette cautiously took it.

He pulled her into a hug.

The embrace was awkward, one-sided, and Marinette stiffened when he slowly wrapped his arms around her, moving so slowly to give her the chance to pull away if she wanted to.

It wasn't a sensation that she was used to.

Adrien had hugged her when they were children, when she'd given him some candy that she'd stashed away in her cupboard—

No one had held her like that in years.

Her eyes felt hot.

He didn't do anything else.

His arms stayed wrapped around her, holding her against his chest, but it wasn't overwhelming. She wasn't smothered, didn't feel her body reacting in pain like it usually would when someone was so close—

The only ones to touch her as of late had mostly been with bad intentions.

Chloé was her friend, but they'd never hugged.

Tentatively, Marinette returned the action, wrapping her arms loosely around his middle, resting her head on his shoulder as she took in a shuddering breath. The height difference between them made the position comfortable, not a struggle with them bumping heads as they adjusted.

They had to be causing a scene.

Two teenagers hugging in front of the swings in the middle of the day, in front of all those children and their parents—

Marinette didn't care.

She swallowed thickly.

He didn't apologise, didn't say that he was sorry that she had to go through that, and she didn't glance up to see whether his expression was one of pity. Of all the people she could talk to, Adrien was the one to best understand her, wasn't he?

Chloé barely had a grasp on human injuries, even after living for many decades.

A quiet laugh escaped her.

Adrien didn't pull away from the hug. "Your place is out, then."

"...What?"

"We can't go there," he clarified, leaning back so he could see her face, a small smile that didn't reach his eyes present. "I'm a secret to your friend, right? Because I don't want to die on the spot."

That was one way to put it.

"You could always come back to mine," Adrien mused. "But we might have to have the door open. Even though Alya's with Nino, if she comes over alone, my parents insist on it—well, they do with Nino, too. Maybe it's just my friends they don't trust."

She quietly pointed out, "I'm your friend."

"Exactly," he agreed, smiling wider. "I don't want to give my parents a heart attack if they happen to walk past when you're showing me the—the sword."

Marinette was the one to pull back and shove her hands into the pockets of her jacket. "Not a good idea."

"Maybe not." Adrien's shoulders slumped as he frowned.

She didn't have anything to suggest.

However, Adrien did.

He made an excited noise, snapping with his fingers before pointing at her as he exclaimed, "You can sneak in!"

Marinette was bewildered. "I can do what?"

"Sneak into my room!" he insisted, bouncing on the balls of his feet. "You're, like, super good at that kind of stuff, right? I mean, you have to be to do what you _do_. You could come in my window when my parents are asleep. I'm usually up at that time, so it should work."

"You want me," she started slowly, gesturing wildly between the two of them, "to break into your bedroom?"

Adrien beamed. "It's not really breaking in if I'm there, is it?"

"That's not—"

"You come and check on me anyway, don't you?" he interrupted, sounding calm and casual, as though they were talking about something completely normal. "So, why not have a peek and see for yourself? We can have a chat, too. It'll be a friendly visit."

It wasn't something she'd ever thought she'd do.

Adrien's home wasn't a place to break into; sure, she'd checked the outside to see where the doors were, knew which bedroom was Adrien's, knew the owners of the two cars on the drive, but she'd never felt the need to go _inside_.

The first time she'd been there had been for his birthday.

And yet, he was suggesting it with a wide smile, clearly pleased with his offer.

Marinette was baffled. "But that's—"

"Brilliant?" he proposed, resting his chin on his open palm, posing. "I do have a brilliant mind sometimes, you know. It shines when I really need it to."

They ended the conversation on Marinette saying she'd think about.

Adrien didn't drop the subject.

He was convinced that it was genius. In his words, it solved their problem of his parents wanting him to have the door open when someone was round, made it so they wouldn't be seen inspecting a weapon in public and looking shifty, and Chloé wouldn't catch wind of him.

It was absolutely absurd.

The school was closed for the winter holidays the following week, so Adrien persisted that it was an even better idea then.

"What if your parents hear us?" she asked.

He snorted. "They sleep like the dead on the other side of the house, it's _fine_."

"They could wake up," she pointed out, crossing arms. "And then you'd be grounded. For what? Weeks?"

"Yeah, I really doubt that," Adrien denied, sounding so sure of himself. "They don't wake up when Plagg's screaming outside their bedroom door. He eventually comes and sulks in my room because he can't sit on their blanket."

She was dubious. "Are you sure?"

"I'm inviting you," he reminded her. "If I wasn't sure, would I really suggest this? Plus, it would be nice to hang out with you one-on-one, but somewhere more private."

Her chest felt warm.

The rejections she had to his proposal were dwindling.

With the upcoming holiday, it came with Alya leaving the city to visit her family for Christmas. Alya had stared directly into her eyes while promising to keep in touch while she was gone, telling her that she could call or text any time she wanted.

Marinette was a little confused at that.

Nino was excited to stay home and not get changed out of his pyjamas for days on end.

When they asked about her plans, Marinette had shrugged, saying that she didn't have any.

Adrien was the one to ask, "Not even with your friend?"

Marinette had to pause at that. "I don't know if she even celebrates it any more."

Alya and Nino shared an odd look.

It didn't occur to her how strange that would sound to them; they weren't in the know, weren't aware that Chloé had lived so long that she didn't keep track of how old she was any more, let alone all of the holidays. Marinette imagined that it all got boring after a while.

Chloé confirmed as much. "Yeah, fuck that."

Marinette gave her a thumbs up.

There was something that was bothering her, though. Since the summer, Marinette had been targeting demons much more than she had in the past—killed more than she had in the previous year in that short timespan—and it made her wonder how Chloé had lived so long only to reach a certain point of power.

"Because," Chloé started, sounding affronted. "There's only so many strong ones around here, yeah? And I don't want to travel around finding the high and mighty because it would only put a target on my head."

Marinette frowned. "But they wouldn't remember."

"What if I got caught on camera or some shit, idiot?" Chloé retorted, not impressed. "Or someone fucking _saw_? Slow and steady was good until—it wasn't."

"Hey," she said. "At least you can bend a spoon, right?"

Chloé's expression was furious. "I'm going to obliterate you."

She held her hands up in a sign of surrender. "I'm just trying to lighten the mood."

"I'll be fucking happier when you're dead."

"You love me," Marinette declared.

She had to duck to avoid the remote hitting her.

It shattered on the wall.

Chloé glowered. "Buy me a new one."

She didn't say no to that.

Marinette put on an oversized hoodie that had a pocket with zips—extra safe for storing the bandalore in—and made sure she had cash in her wallet before leaving.

The remote was in a plastic bag in her hands when she got a message from Adrien, asking whether she was out stalking the night.

She snorted.

When she replied that she was shopping, Adrien brought up the option of coming to visit him.

It was almost ten at night.

He told her his parents would be going to bed within the hour, and that if she came at quarter past eleven, it would be safe.

She'd checked on him since school had ended for the holidays, but she hadn't spoken to him. It had to count for something that he continued to text her nonsense daily, even more so with their time off, though he'd only informed her once that he was going out with his mother for coffee.

The rest of the time, he was being like Nino and staying inside in his pyjamas (as he'd happily told her and sent a picture of the bright-coloured trousers he was wearing that day).

Marinette dropped the remote back at Chloé's first.

Near the end of Adrien's street, she sent him a message asking if he was sure.

He replied within an instant.

And so, she told him to open his window enough for her to get through.

Adrien quickly sent back that he needed warning because he had to hold onto his cat. Plagg had seen the open window and immediately wanted to go out through it to make noise on the small roof above the porch for attention.

She understood that despite the multiple spelling mistakes.

With the bandalore, she used the trees along the street to thrust herself off of the ground, landing partially on the open window and the roof that Plagg had wanted to get onto. There was noise from her movement—she wasn't sure whether it was enough to wake up his parents—and she was opening her mouth to say that when she noticed that Adrien was looking at her with a gobsmacked expression.

The cat in his arms was struggling to get free.

Adrien opened his arms and let him drop down.

Marinette greeted him with, "Hi."

He parroted right back with wide eyes, "Hi."

There was an awkward moment where they just looked at each other. His cat had wandered off, no longer trying to go for the window while she was hanging onto the frame, perched outside and peering in, waiting for an invitation.

It was the wind moving his curtains that spurred him into action. "It's cold, come in, Marinette."

His carpet was cream.

Marinette awkwardly sat on the windowsill, taking off her shoes before she slipped through into the room. She remembered from her first visit that they couldn't wear shoes in the house, and it would only raise suspicion if Adrien had mud tracked all over his room.

When she said that aloud, he laughed. "You're smart."

"It's pretty obvious," she replied, holding her shoes and looking around for somewhere to put them.

He gestured to his desk. "I'll wipe the mud into my bin, it'll work."

After she did as he said, Plagg jumped onto the desk to inspect them before he started gnawing on her shoelaces.

Marinette didn't try and stop him.

Adrien sat down on the end of his bed. The duvet was unmade, messy and a contrast to the cleanliness of the rest of the room. There wasn't any clothes on the floor and nothing seemed out of place other than the laptop that was by his pillow instead of at his desk.

She was still standing.

"There's room for you, too," he pointed out.

Marinette sat down beside him. "I'm not keeping you up, am I?"

"My sleep schedule has already gone to shit," Adrien denied, falling back down against the mattress, not caring that his shirt was showing his stomach from his movement. "Nino's too much of a good boy to stay up late. He likes being up real early in the morning, even when there's no school."

"The complete opposite of you, then," she mused.

"What about you?" he asked, stretching to reach for a spare pillow and bringing it closer so he could place it under his head, making him able to see her easily. "Would you say you're a morning or night person?"

Marinette shrugged. "I don't know."

"You'll know someday," Adrien declared, patting her thigh in a joking way without sitting up. "I'm usually up around now if you ever want to talk, you know."

"I do text you," she said.

He sighed. "For something more than reporting how your stalking went, I mean."

Instead of defending that last comment, she remarked, "I'll think about it."

"Good." Adrien beamed.

She smiled back.

Plagg was still playing with her shoelaces

Adrien was the one to ask, "So, when are you showing me this top secret weapon properly?"

It was a fitting title for it.

"When you're sitting up properly," Marinette replied.

And when he did just that, Marinette undid the straps that held the sheath to her body, fiddling with it underneath her clothing before pulling it out and putting it down on the bed between them.

"I didn't bring the other one," she said.

Adrien wasn't upset by that. "I didn't expect you to. I'm still being tested to see if I'm worthy of it yet."

She snorted. "This isn't an exam."

"It might as well be," he replied, looking down to the leather straps before up at her. "Do you always have that on?"

"Yes," Marinette confirmed. "It's the safest way to keep it on me and hidden. Believe me, I did have it stashed in my backpack at first, but that got inconvenient real quick."

He made a thoughtful noise. "Can't exactly reach into your bag when you're being attacked, I guess."

"That, too," she said with a laugh.

"What's so special about this?" Adrien questioned, running his fingers over the leather. "Other than it being able to kill demons."

Marinette admitted, "It can cut through anything easily—trees, stone, and even bone."

"Don't rhyme at me."

She shot him a unimpressed look.

"I go to humour when I'm nervous," he defended himself, retracting his hand putting it on the duvet instead, but he did lean in to peer at the weapon resting between them. "How easily are we talking?"

"Everything requires the same level of strength," she patiently explained. "And I can still cut through the same things as easily as I could when I was a kid."

He was wide-eyed at that. "For real?"

"Yes," she confirmed.

"Can I—is it okay if I touch it?" Adrien asked, staring back down at the covered weapon. "I promise not to cut myself or anything. I'll be responsible."

She almost laughed at that. "Sure, as long as you don't start threatening me with it."

"I would _never_," he replied, aghast. "You don't really think that, do you?"

"If I did, I wouldn't be hiding in your room with you," Marinette replied, adjusting how she was sitting so she was more comfortable, leaning back and resting her hands on the mattress. "Go ahead and take it out. I'd advise against trying to slash the air in case you trip or something."

Adrien wasn't offended at that. "Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. I don't want to accidentally stab myself."

It wasn't like Kim.

He wasn't going to touch her bandalore and break his bones from flying across a large distance, falling to his eventual death. Adrien was going to touch the handle of the blade and slowly bring it out—there was no danger there.

Still, she was watching him carefully as he ran his hand over the leather until getting to the handle, pulling it out slowly.

He didn't struggle with it, didn't have to use his strength get it to come out, and wordlessly opened his mouth as he admired the weapon when it was fully out.

Marinette was glad that she'd cleaned it.

She imagined his reaction would've been different if there was still blood visible.

"It's so... small," Adrien remarked, barely lifting it up from the bed.

He wasn't wrong.

The blade itself barely reached the end of his hand when not counting the handle. It was small, easy to make use of, and a good size to hide underneath her clothes.

"What did you expect?" Marinette queried, gesturing down to what it had been contained in. "That's the same size."

"I don't know," he said, gently moving his hand with the blade in it, testing how much it weighed. "I just—I thought it would be something more, you know? When talking about some magical sword that can cut through anything, you don't really expect it to be, like, the same size as a pair of scissors."

She snorted. "A huge sword would only be inconvenient."

"I guess," he agreed. "Does this mean you go around shanking people in the back? Because that's a weird image, and definitely less majestic than I've been thinking about for a while."

Marinette chose to address his last comment. "Why are you thinking about me stabbing people?"

"Why wouldn't I?" he countered. "It's what you're doing, isn't it? Going around and stabbing demons?"

"Yes."

"Of course I'm going to think about that when you're texting me to say you're stalking someone," Adrien replied, putting the blade back into the holder, leaving it between them on the bed. "And now I'm going to be looking out for a tiny lump underneath your clothes."

She raised her eyebrows.

"The sword!" he spluttered, flailing his hands in embarrassment. "That's—_you_ never make comments like that!"

"I didn't say anything," she said.

"You didn't have to," Adrien muttered, ears growing red.

Rather than teasing him further, Marinette reached out and grasped the handle, taking the blade out and moving her wrist in a circle. "What do you think?"

He didn't say anything.

"Adrien?" she prompted, placing the sword on her, the end of it facing away from him.

"That's—" Adrien started, cutting himself off as he wildly gestured her way. "_Marinette_."

Baffled by his reaction, she asked, "What?"

"It's _bigger_."

"What are you on about?" she questioned, a bit worried.

"Look," he insisted, scrambling to pick up the sheath, placing it onto her lap beside the sword. "It's not—it wouldn't fit in there."

She blinked.

He was right.

Marinette lifted the sword up curiously, a reflection of light being cast on the wall and catching Plagg's attention from the sudden movement, and she moved it slowly, admiring it in a way that she hadn't done for years.

At first, she'd marvelled at it, been in awe at how well it had been able to handle anything she'd tried to use it against, but that had dulled with age. It had been in Marinette's possession for years, and seeing it pierce through someone's skin so many times had lost the horrified feeling that she'd had in the beginning.

It was second nature to her by then.

And yet, it wasn't something that she'd noticed. The blade was an inch or so longer than it had been before, the handle still the perfect size to fit in her hand.

It had never felt awkward to her.

Unlike the wooden swords that Aloys had taught her with, Marinette hadn't had trouble with the weapon before. Even when she was little, using it to cut her straggly hair into something more unkempt, but short, she hadn't nicked herself with it.

It had never been something to question.

"So it is," she remarked.

Adrien was the panicked one between them. "That's not—are you _not_ concerned about this?"

"I'm pretty sure it's a magical sword," she said in return, moving the blade around to take a closer look at it. There wasn't any signature on it, the handle was the same as it had always been, and from just looking, nothing seemed off about it. "I'm not surprised."

"Well, I am," he choked out, incredulous. "Try and put it back in."

It went in perfectly.

Adrien sucked in a breath.

And when she pulled it out, the length was longer than the sheath. She hadn't felt anything change while holding it, no sudden moving underneath her fingertips, and it seemed to only be when it was hidden within the sheath that it changed.

"It came with this," Marinette said, tapping the holder. "The other one did, too. I just added the straps so I could wear them."

When Adrien pulled the weapon out, it was the right size to fit in.

Marinette took it out again and it had changed.

She didn't understand.

And from Adrien's confused expression, he didn't either.

They didn't test it for much longer. Adrien had admitted that he didn't feel comfortable holding one, let alone that he didn't remember his lessons at all, and Marinette wasn't going to push him to accept the other one.

It was safe where she'd stashed it.

When she'd tucked the blade underneath her clothing again—with Adrien turning to the side so he wouldn't see her stomach when she lifted her shirt up—it was past midnight.

He surprised her by asking her to stay, offering for them to play a game or just talk.

She didn't reject the offer.

-x-

It wasn't something that happened every night.

But almost once a week, usually on the weekends when she'd been out as it was, Adrien suggested that she could come over to his for them to hang out. His reasoning was that he stayed up late anyway, and she was awake, so it seemed like a good idea to spend time together.

"We barely hang out," he said, passing her a knitted blanket to drape over herself as they sat down on the sofa. "And this way, we don't have Alya and Nino butting in and asking what we're talking about, and my parents won't be scared that we're making out."

She shot him a wide-eyed look at that.

Adrien had to cover his mouth with his hand to muffle his laughter.

There was something special about spending time with him outside of school; where they weren't surrounded by other people, not in a café and concerned about what other people could overhear, and she couldn't quite describe how it made her feel to see him in such a vulnerable position when he stood in front of his window, holding his cat to his chest while wearing pyjamas with messy hair.

It was different to when he'd forgotten to brush his hair before coming to school.

The second time she'd come to visit, after she'd taken her shoes off before coming in through the window, Adrien had readily offered her a fluffy pair of slippers.

They were bright pink.

"They're my favourite," he said. "But I figured you'd prefer them to me offering you some thick socks."

Adrien's socks were the type that had a specific place for each of his toes to go.

She laughed when he wiggled his toes.

His smile showed his dimples.

She didn't bring the sword out again, but it was still on her.

Rather than suggest that she should watch something over text, send her a specific video, or link to a comic online that he wanted her to read—that she rarely ever did, usually forgetting about it—Adrien had changed his tactic to grabbing his laptop and doing it for her when she was there.

It was endearing how enthusiastic he was about sharing his interests, and he wasn't offended when she couldn't get into them.

Marinette gave one show a fair chance, saying after episode two that she thought the premise wasn't something she understood.

Adrien just laughed and said, "It is pretty stupid, isn't it?"

So, they moved onto the next time.

The average time she left was around two.

It wasn't wise to visit on weekdays.

Adrien had dark marks underneath his eyes as it was from his sleep schedules, and she didn't want to stay up any later than she had to.

Being sluggish from lack of sleep was a danger that she didn't want to face any time soon.

The type she'd been used to was from hunger, but she hadn't felt that in years.

She didn't want to.

It didn't take a lot of research to realise that her growth was stunted from her childhood; she was usually the smallest in the room amongst others her age, she could see her ribs when she took her shirt off, and while her appetite was larger than it had been, it paled in comparison to others.

She didn't want to gorge herself just to throw up after.

Marinette thought she was doing well, considering how she'd been before.

It was fine.

The bruises on her body were from her own choices and decisions; she wasn't a helpless child that needed saving any longer, and she wasn't scared and hiding from strangers, hoping not to be discovered.

She'd made a life for herself.

Alya sent her texts over the holiday, asking how she was.

Marinette told her she was fine.

Alya asked about her grandfather.

It made her wonder whether she was supposed to be asking about everyone else's parental figures.

That's what was happening to her, wasn't it?

The weekend before school started, Marinette slipped into Adrien's room, not putting up a fight as she put the slippers on. He handed her the knitted blanket as before, so she wrapped that around her shoulders and shuffled in, sitting down on the sofa as he set his laptop down in front of them.

"Should I be asking about your parents?" she asked.

Adrien waved a hand dismissively. "They're asleep, it's fine. They went to bed, like, half an hour earlier today."

"That's not what I meant," Marinette replied, leaning back and adjusting her grip on the blanket, her hands pressed against her chest as she kept it around her as some sort of cape. "In general, should I be asking? And about Alya's and Nino's?"

"I—no?" Adrien said, moving a pillow to make room for Plagg to sit beside him. "You've barely said anything to Nino's, and you don't even know Alya's. Why are you asking?"

"Because." She wetted her lips. "Alya asks about my grandfather a lot."

He shrugged.

She frowned.

Then, he sat upright, saying loudly, "Oh, I forgot about _that_."

"What?"

"I—I've told her it's _not _true, but there's not much I can say about it, you know?" Adrien babbled, running a hand through his hair before turning to look at her with a frazzled expression. "I thought she'd let it go."

It wasn't clear what he was talking about.

Marinette quietly asked, "Let what go?"

He grimaced. "You have bruises because of—of demons, right?"

"I guess," she said. "Why?"

"Alya thinks you're being abused," he blurted loudly. He paused for a moment, his gaze darting to his door despite his previous assurances that they wouldn't be disturbed, and it was only when they heard no sound that he elaborated to say, "She thinks it's your—your grandfather's causing them."

Marinette didn't know what to say to that.

"She hasn't said anything to the teachers," Adrien told her, putting his hand down between the two of them and leaning closer. "I told her not to, not without evidence. And she's not going to find any, right? I mean, none of us know where you live, and you're not even _there_ any more. It's fine."

Alya cared about her, didn't she?

That was what it was all about—thinking that Marinette was being unfairly hurt by someone and wanting to correct that.

She'd never had that before.

It had never occurred to her that her inexperience would be translated that way to others. Before Alya had practically barged her way into her life, no one had questioned her strange tendencies, never tried to find out why she didn't want to talk with anyone else, let alone why she wasn't up-to-date with the world.

But Alya did.

Her eyes felt hot.

"I told her it's not true, really," Adrien insisted, continuing to ramble on in the way he did when he wanted to fill the silence between them. "But there's only so many times I can try and say that maybe you really _did_ fall over and hit your face or something. I mean, she'd be fucking horrified if she saw my phone to see the pictures you send me, but she doesn't know my passcode, so we're good."

She could always rely on Adrien to talk when she couldn't.

He was like that when they were little, too.

The words came out slowly. "She thinks I'm... being abused?"

Adrien let out a nervous laugh. "Yeah."

She had to blink to stop the gathering tears.

"Oh," Marinette whispered.

And then, Adrien was gently placing his hand onto her thigh as he said just as quietly as her, "I should've said something before, but I—I didn't know how to. I honestly thought she'd drop it."

Alya was loud, stubborn, and wasn't good at listening to the word no. She'd been annoying at first—still was, at times—but as rough as she was around the edges, she was soft and tried to understand Marinette without judgement.

Marinette wanted to spend more time with her.

That realisation was sudden.

She couldn't say anything else.

Alya was perfectly human; unaware of the dangers of the world, had stared a Chloé without fear, not knowing that she could've been ripped apart with a single _punch—_

She laughed.

And with that, she couldn't stop. The noises came out a little choked, her eyes felt wet, and it seemed hysterical to her own ears. Marinette brought her knees up to her chest, pressing her forehead against them and closing her eyes as her body shook.

Adrien's hand that had fallen off was gently placed onto her shoulder.

She was crying.

And he—he just offered her tissues without asking any questions.

It was backwards, the opposite of all the others times where tears had been involved between the two of them.

Adrien handled tears as well as she did.

There wasn't much said between them that night, but she felt closer to him than she did before.

She usually left when he yawned the first time, but he'd asked whether she wanted to stay for a bit.

They quietly watched a few videos.

And when she really did leave, Adrien sent her a text, telling her to sleep well.

Her chest felt warm.

-x-

If she had any bruises on her face, she continued to put make-up on them.

It seemed too much to wear it on the rest of her body when her clothes might cause it to rub off, but the cold weather meant that she could wear leggings while exercising, so she wouldn't have Alya looking at her in concern.

With the context that Alya was worried about her, the questions about her grandfather weren't confusing any more.

They were almost touching.

Marinette answered much the same as she had before, though. She couldn't tell Alya or Nino that she wasn't living with him any more, but she was considering bringing up the subject with Adrien to confess that Fu wasn't actually related to her.

But it didn't seem important.

While she still had her plan to slowly cause each student she came across to bleed, she couldn't be too obvious about it.

Marinette gained a new passion for sports.

It wasn't in the way the teachers wanted.

"Contacts still giving you trouble?" Alya questioned as they sat down on the sidelines, letting the other team play while they waited for their turn.

Marinette frowned. "What?"

"Your contacts?" Alya asked.

She looked at her in confusion.

"For your _eyes_?"

"Oh," she said. "Right, yes. My contacts."

Alya's expression was puzzled. "You are wearing them, aren't you?"

Marinette shrugged. "I lost them."

"You _lost_ them?" Alya exclaimed, a bit too loud and drawing attention to them. "Are you okay with seeing the board and shit? I'd offer to show you my notes, but they're terrible compared to yours normally. I mean, if mine are better, I'd worry about whether you're ill or not."

It was a lie that she'd forgotten about.

"I'm fine," she tried to say.

"Are you picking up some new ones soon?" Alya persisted, not taking that for an answer. "You do have enough money for it, right? I'm sure your grandfather would pay for them if you complain that you're doing awful in school—"

Marinette interrupted to assure her, "I'm getting more at the weekend."

Alya wasn't convinced. "Are you sure?"

"I've got an appointment," she lied.

That conversation led to Alya sending her a picture of her notes in any of the classes that they shared, and within the next hour, Adrien and Nino had sent theirs, too.

Adrien was the only one to ask what was going on.

Marinette replied that Alya thought she couldn't see.

He asked about her contacts.

She honestly thought that he'd forgotten about that.

When he asked her to visit at the weekend—when she had blood on her shirt, hidden by the colour of the fabric but it was damp against her skin—she decided to be honest with him.

Adrien was trying to understand her more.

However, her approach for the conversation wasn't the best. "I don't actually need contacts."

Adrien didn't take his eyes away from the screen where the game they were playing was displayed. "Eh?"

Marinette managed to dodge an attack that she'd been dying to the past few weeks. "My eyes are fine. I lied to you all about it."

He killed her character. "...Why?"

"It seemed like a good idea at the time," she honestly replied.

Adrien was the one to pull up the menu screen to pause before turning to look at her. "At the time?"

She shifted. "Tell me you won't overreact."

"I'll try?" It came out sounding like a question. "I can't really give you an answer to that when I don't know the context. With you it could be anything from... I don't know, something normal and then _murder_."

Marinette sat up straighter. "I haven't murdered anyone."

"Oh, good job," he remarked, almost sounding sarcastic. "Are you sure about that? Because you're making my blanket bloody right now."

She looked down to where it was wrapped around her, the fabric becoming slightly stained by the red. "I didn't notice."

"It's fine, I'll say I had a nosebleed if anyone notices before I can wash it," he told her, sounding ever-so-calm, as though it was a normal conversation that they had all the time. "It's not yours, right?"

She shook her head. "No."

"I thought not," Adrien murmured. "Since you didn't send me any pictures."

He trusted her.

Marinette smiled.

"What's the lie?" he prodded.

"Oh, right." Her smile dropped at that. "I lied so I can get away with bumping into people or hitting them with sports equipment. It was working well until you guys started sending me your notes daily."

"Okay," Adrien said, drawling out the second vowel. "And why are you doing that?"

She didn't hesitate. "To check if they're demons."

He was the one to be dumbfounded. "...What?"

"They can age changes," Marinette reminded him, pulling the blanket back closer to her now that she knew that he was okay with the blood on that would get on it. "It's entirely possible that there could be one at the school. I don't know _why_ they'd torture themselves like that, but it happens. There's some that pretend to be children and get adopted to have a new life and all."

Adrien's lips parted but before he could find the right words, he pursed them shut.

"If it helps, I'm not doing anything too bad," she placated him.

"Marinette," he said slowly. "You almost broke someone's nose."

"_Almost_," she repeated. "That's the keyword there."

"You can't just—" Adrien made a frustrated noise, pushing his hair away from his forehead. "You're not going to listen to me, are you? No matter what I say, you're still going to do this."

She wasn't ashamed to say, "Yes."

There was a brief pause where they only looked at each other. Adrien's expression was troubled, showing that he wasn't completely okay with the conversation, but she wasn't surprised about that.

It was nice that he wasn't fighting her about it.

He tentatively asked, "Can you promise not to hurt anyone too bad?"

"I'm not trying to get expelled," she wryly replied.

"I could—I could help out?" Adrien offered, the lilt in his voice showcasing his troubled emotions. "Not that I'm going to go round hitting people, but I could... tell you if anyone gets injured?"

Curious, she asked, "You would?"

"I'm just looking for fast healing, right?"

"That and anyone that's... interested in you, I guess," Marinette mused, happy from his sudden urge to support her. "I don't quite know how it works, but they should know about you just by _looking_. Don't be alone with anyone."

He rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I already got the stranger danger talk growing up."

Marinette was almost offended by how dismissive that response was.

"I mean it," she insisted, reaching out to gently touch his arm to get his attention. And as Adrien met her gaze, she said, "They won't do anything to break their cover in public, but that doesn't mean they won't try and lure you elsewhere."

He let out a noisy breath. "Why not just push me down the stairs? There's no cameras, and unless anyone else is there, no one would even realise it would them, probably."

Had she not told him?

"They have to be touching you when you die," Marinette informed him, trying to make it clear that she wasn't joking. "That's why—why I was so surprised that you were okay when you were taken before. It's rare for demons to work together, as they have to _both _be touching you to get the... boost when you're dead."

"Boost," he flatly repeated.

She shrugged. "It's the best way to describe it."

"For someone who's supposed to be a demon expert, I get the feeling you don't know a lot," Adrien remarked.

Marinette took her hand back, using it to grip the blanket and wrap it tighter around her. "I wouldn't say I'm an expert."

"I think killing them almost weekly gives you that title."

"It has to be done," she said.

He swallowed. "Does it?"

"The weaker they are, the less likely they are to cause a scene," Marinette answered, leaning back and resting her head against cushion, still tucked up in the blanket and feeling cosier than she had in a long time. "Sometimes, they leave the city and go somewhere else after they've regenerated because the other demons start to target them."

Adrien's smile didn't reach his eyes. "Your spy from the inside tell you that?"

"Yes," she confirmed. "And they're coming after her."

"Oh." He looked surprised at that. "Are you—is she okay with you after that?"

Marinette shifted, her gaze turning to the paused screen rather than his expression, not wanting to see the concern there.

There wasn't any way that she could describe her relationship with Chloé that would make him understand. Adrien didn't—

He'd been told what had happened, but he didn't know what it was really like.

He hadn't seen Chloé's eyes crushed, blood seeping over her tanned skin and staining her golden hair as she laid dead on the ground moments before her chest was crushed.

"We're okay," she said.

Because they were.

They had to be.

Living together meant that they saw each other more, but Chloé wasn't going out at night as much. It was mostly only when Marinette was there that she went out, surely because it was safer that way.

Chloé splurged on online shopping almost weekly.

She didn't go shopping in person much any more.

It was safer in the day; people were more likely to spot violence that happened, blood on the floor wasn't covered by the darkness, and it would've been extremely disorientating to come back into a state of being a day later in the middle of a crowd and have to try and play it off like they'd been there all along.

Chloé had heard complaints about that before.

Marinette hoped she never experienced it.

-x-

Alya absolutely thought she was being abused.

Marinette had pushed the sleeves of her shirt up, too hot from the heater in the room combined with the ovens that were cooking their assigned foods, and it didn't escape Alya's notice that there were bruises across at least a third of her arm.

Instead of shying away and avoiding the topic, Marinette met her gaze, acknowledging that she saw, before she went back to checking her notes to make sure she'd done the recipe right.

Alya quietly asked her, "What happened?"

She looked down to her arm. "I was sparring."

"You—what?" was the baffled response to that.

She shrugged before squatting to peer into the oven to see how her food was cooking. "I'm not very good at it, but I'm getting there."

And that wasn't a lie. She'd more than likely sprained her wrist, returned back to her bedroom with an aching arm, and it was from Adrien's insistence that she checked to see whether it was broken or not.

In the morning, it was only bruised.

It barely hurt to write.

She couldn't tell whether the healing was increasing or not. All the injuries she'd acquired since hadn't been as serious as almost dying, so she had no timeline to compare them to.

From what she could tell, they all healed relatively quickly.

Other than the bruises, of course.

"Sparring?" Alya pressed on.

"I'm learning self-defence," she declared. "My friend's teaching me."

"Oh," Alya breathed, sounding a bit dazed. "That's—that's cool. Yeah. Real cool."

She smiled at that. "I think so, too."

"How is it?" Alya asked, squatting down beside her, almost falling over and reaching out and putting her hand on Marinette's shoulder to balance herself. And as soon as she was stable, she quickly took her hand back. "I wanted to before, but I never really put any effort into finding where the classes would be."

"Fun." Marinette grinned, all teeth. "My friend likes to fight, so that's great."

Alya was wide-eyed. "Right."

"You met her before," she said, offering the information without any prompting. "At a restaurant? It was a while ago, so I'm not sure if you—"

"Her!" Alya exclaimed, snapping her fingers before pointing at her triumphantly. "Yes, I remember her. I mean, you haven't really mentioned anyone else, but I didn't want to assume that you only know one person."

"I do," she admitted quietly.

Alya blinked. "Eh?"

"I only know one person," Marinette clarified, standing up and stretching her arms out above her head. "I was never interested in befriending anyone else."

Knees clicking as she stood up, Alya pointed out, "You've got us."

There wasn't any denying it any more, was there?

"Yeah," she admitted softly. "I do."

The way Alya's expression brightened, her smile reaching her eyes as she visibly reacted to the admission, made her chest feel warm.

It was a nice feeling.

Alya was clueless, but she was kind.

Marinette didn't mind that any more.

The next time Alya invited her round for the afternoon at the weekend, she didn't deny the request.

It was early, before Adrien would be up without someone waking him up to get him ready, when Marinette arrived at Alya's home.

Her sisters were home.

They didn't bother them.

It was awkward at first, with Marinette not knowing what to pick when Alya gave her options on what they could do, but much like with Adrien, Alya could fill the silence with her babbling.

Since realising that Alya cared, she'd wanted to see how it would be when they were one-on-one, and it was a pleasant surprise to realise that she enjoyed it. Alya made her laugh, was fun to be around, and Marinette relaxed around her, no longer jumping when Alya made sudden movements to excitedly show her something.

Marinette's phone vibrated within the second hour she was there.

It was Adrien telling her that he was awake, asking her what she was doing.

She told him she was at Alya's.

Adrien sent back an emoji.

"Your friend?" Alya queried, tapping away at her own phone, trying to find a specific thing she wanted to show her.

"Adrien."

"Oh," Alya said. "Really?"

Marinette didn't look up as she typed her reply to him. "Yes."

"He's awful at responding to me."

"I'm the bad one, I think," she mused, tucking her phone away in her pocket.

Alya was staring at her.

She shifted. "What?"

It took a moment for Alya to smile. "Nothing."

"That's not convincing at all," Marinette muttered, but she didn't push for anything more.

It wasn't like when she was at Adrien's. They weren't sitting somewhere in his room, idly talking between watching or playing as it had become their routine, instead they were perched on Alya's bed as Alya was gushing about one of her interests.

Marinette was interested as soon as Alya explained it was a documentary explaining how murderers had been caught because they didn't dispose of their bodies properly.

It shouldn't have filled her with curiosity that Alya liked horror-related things so much. She'd seen the clip of her phone the previous year, when she'd remarked that bones _don't_ break like that, and it had slipped her mind.

Adrien didn't like horror.

She could understand that.

He liked comedy, romance, and all things whimsical; the type of media that would leave him feeling happy, rather than a heavy feeling in his stomach and wondering what he'd just watched.

Alya liked the unknown.

It made her laugh.

And so, when Alya offered for her to come round for them to watch a horror film together, she agreed.

It didn't become a routine, but it was close to it.

Rather than gory films that were rated higher than their age that focused on gore and murder, Alya admitted that she preferred the supernatural-themed ones more.

That was too good to pass up on.

"Anything with demons?" Marinette asked, trying not to laugh.

Adrien looked aghast beside her.

Alya's smile reached her eyes.

It was nice, that was the best way to describe her time with Alya.

There was no comparing it to Adrien or Chloé, though all of them often led to different things; with Adrien, she'd either leave with her cheeks hurting from smiling, or her eyes sore from trying not to cry, and with Chloé it was either a time she could let her guard down, or the complete opposite where she left with injuries.

She didn't mind either way.

It became apparent that trying to juggle replying to both Adrien and Alya was something that she wasn't very good at. Adrien wasn't offended when she left his messages on read, knowing that she was busy, but Alya kept prodding her after an hour later and asking whether she was okay.

She couldn't exactly say that she was fine and cleaning the blood off of her sword.

A magical sword, apparently.

She wasn't that surprised.

The surprising part was that she hadn't noticed over all those years of using it.

It was a little embarrassing, if anything.

She wondered when she would've noticed it without Adrien's observation.

There was the fact that she'd never let anyone else touch it. When she'd passed out over the summer, the blade had been in her backpack, untouched by Chloé while she was unconscious, and she'd never handed it over for Chloé to use in their everyday murders.

She wasn't planning to.

The idea for giving Adrien the other one was out when she wasn't sure of everything that it could do. There was always the chance that something could go wrong if it didn't work properly for him—

It was best not to think about it.

So, she didn't.

Marinette spent time with Alya, sometimes going over to her house in the evenings after school, no longer having to give the excuse that she had to have dinner with her grandfather first—she didn't even have to tell them that any more as it was the accepted truth.

She wasn't going to correct them.

When she was at Alya's, Adrien assured her that he was at home, texting her to confirm that his family didn't want to go anywhere when she said where she going to be. It was a routine check-in by that point, with Adrien informing her of trivial things like him going to the supermarket was with mother.

He didn't question it any more.

Marinette continued to send him pictures of her injuries.

He started sending pictures of Plagg back.

And when she asked why, he said it was to brighten the mood.

She didn't tell him to stop.

Alya didn't pester her about her bruises when they were visible, but it was clear that she didn't fully accept the excuse of learning self-defence. After all, going to train to defend herself shouldn't mean that she'd leave with bruises for months on end, not even if she was the worst student.

Then, Alya brought up the topic of make-up.

Marinette shrugged. "I don't really like it."

It wasn't a lie.

If it meant that she wouldn't draw attention to herself, she would've let the bruises stay on her face. Marinette wasn't vain and didn't like to look in the mirror and preen like Chloé.

It was the opposite.

Marinette didn't like looking in her reflection to see how she almost looked gaunt, the way her cheekbones stood out, and it was worse when she had less clothing on.

"Fair," Alya remarked, not pushing for an explanation. "What about nail varnish?"

She looked down at her short nails. "Never tried it."

And that was how she'd messily painted her own nails black while watching a film about some sort of witchcraft. It was over-the-top, dramatic, and the humour wasn't too bad as she actually laughed aloud one or two times during it.

The varnish got on her skin around her nail, looking much like her terrible projects in art class. Alya told her she could either leave it on overnight to see what came of and then pick the rest off with her nails, or she could go the more professional route to get it off.

She chose the first.

The black meant that she wouldn't have to try so hard to get the blood out from underneath her nails.

It was one of her best decisions from that point.

Marinette didn't care when it chipped, slowly came off and wasn't an even coat across all of her nails, not when it still did the job of covering up what was underneath. She'd purchased her own bottle of it from a nearby pharmacy, not caring about the brand or price differences, only that it was black and thick enough to only bother with one coat.

When Chloé caught her painting over the chipped parts completely, she threw a bottle of nail varnish remover at her, demanding that she take it off first.

"Why?" she asked.

Chloé shot her an unimpressed look. "Because you look fucking homeless."

"I kind of am," she mused, turning the bottle of remover over to inspect the instructions. "Unless you count where the government think I live. I wonder if I've had any mail delivered there."

"Only shit from your school, probably," Chloé said, leaning against the doorway and crossing her arms. "Any reason you're trying to doll yourself up? You hate make-up."

The fact that Chloé knew that made her smile.

"This way, I won't have to pick under my nails to get rid of the blood," she bluntly told her, holding up her hand and wiggling her fingers. "It'll be my best kept secret."

Chloé scowled. "Disgusting."

"I'm not spending, like, ten minutes after a shower trying to get it all out," Marinette snapped back. "That's stupid."

"Just rip the nail out and wash it, easy," was Chloé's response.

Marinette couldn't tell whether she was being serious.

She didn't ask.

Chloé's smile was all teeth.

-x-

There was a routine to her life.

It was going well for her. She had a jacket that was warm, gloves that she could move the end of to make them fingerless so it was easier for her to use her weapons, and her shoes had enough grip that she wasn't falling over in the snow.

When parents didn't want the four of them at the house, the most common place for them to go was the shopping centre. It was near the cinema, had heating within certain shops, and the choices of things to do meant that everyone was satisfied with things to do.

There was the shopping, too.

Nino liked to pick out a new hat or socks when he could, Alya liked accessories, and Adrien just wanted to eat.

Marinette tended to agree with Adrien.

He picked out specific things that she hadn't had before, information that she'd admitted quietly in his bedroom between the two of them, and having him point them out and gesturing for her to follow him made her smile.

It was when they went into a clothing store that someone was paying more attention to their group then normal.

To Adrien.

Marinette didn't panic.

She didn't stare at them, but she kept track. They were hovering by a row of clothing behind them, able to be seen in the mirror in front of her, and it was only when her name was called to get her attention that she turned away from the mirror.

They wouldn't do anything in public, after all.

Anything unnatural on the camera footage would cause too much trouble.

"You should try this on," Adrien said, holding up a knitted hat for her to see. "Your hat got a hole in it last week, didn't it?"

A tree branch had yanked it off of her on her way past.

"Okay," she agreed.

Before she could take it from his hands, Adrien had lifted it up, gently placing it on her head. He hadn't pushed her hair away, causing some of it to flatten onto her face uncomfortably.

She didn't say anything when she looked up to see him smiling.

Marinette swallowed.

"It suits you," he stated.

She reached up and adjusted it, brushing her hair aside. "Does it?"

"Black as your soul," he joked.

Marinette raised her middle finger at him.

His laughter was loud.

And when she turned to the mirror to see how it looked, the person was still glancing towards Adrien. They were inspecting the same piece of clothing as before, glancing down to peer at the label before putting it back on the rail.

Marinette turned back around to face Adrien and leaned closer to quietly ask, "Come with me to buy it?"

He looked surprised. "I—sure."

For good measure, she cautiously took ahold of his sleeve to guide him to the other side of the store.

Alya and Nino were preoccupied.

Adrien didn't try and move her hand away.

She took him to the end of the queue. There were a few people ahead of him, wrapping around and following the rope that they were told to stand by, and there were a few stands with small products that were meant to be enticing.

Letting go of his arm, they shuffled forward in the queue. Marinette turned around to inspect the products, lifting one up and peering at the contents before glancing up.

The person had followed them.

Marinette flipped over the box to look at the contents.

"Adrien," she said softly.

He stuffed his hands in his pockets. "Yeah?"

"I need you to do something for me."

He tilted his head to the side, curious. "What's up?"

She made sure to talk quietly enough so they wouldn't be overheard. No one had joined the queue behind them, and she waited until the person in front moved forward.

"I think there's a demon here," she stated.

It was to be expected that he whipped his head around, wide-eyed as he looked around the store, trying to spot them.

"Adrien," she reprimanded, quickly reaching out to grab onto his arm. "_Don't_. I need you to pretend that nothing's changed."

His voice cracked as he replied, "You _what_?"

"They won't do anything in public," Marinette insisted, leaning closer and looking up at him, trying to convey how much she needed for him to listen to her. "I can't guarantee they won't do anything to Alya or Nino if you panic."

She could hear it as he swallowed. "What am I supposed to do?"

There was a lot of options.

They could either wait it out and see whether the demon—because, surely, that was what they were when focusing on Adrien alone—would become bored, or there was the chance they would act rashly from having to wait for so long.

There was more than just the two of them to think about.

"Pretend you got a text saying you need to go back now," she advised. "And walk. They'll go home before us that way."

"Marinette—"

"I'll say I'm going to Chloé's and trail behind you," Marinette interrupted, tugging him forward so they shuffled along in the queue, almost at the front. "I'll go before you, okay? But I won't be too far—just enough for Alya and Nino to think I've gone."

His lower lip was trembling.

"Hey," she said, putting both of her hands on his forearms. "You can do this."

He didn't look away from her. "I can be bait?"

It was good that he wasn't under any illusion that she wasn't about to use her weapons.

"Yeah." Marinette's smile didn't reach her eyes. "For once, you can. But this is the only time I'm letting you do it."

The way he was looking at her could only be described as vulnerable. And when he spoke, his voice cracked again. "You're not leaving me?"

Comforting wasn't her thing.

"No," Marinette insisted. "I'm here to keep you safe, remember?"

Adrien was there, looking pale and almost small in his oversized coat. It was a ridiculous thought when he'd had a growth spurt, with the top of her head reaching his chin, but he looked like a lost child.

It was her fault.

"Promise?" he whispered.

The cashier called for them to come over.

Rather than putting her newly purchased hat in her bag, Marinette pulled the tag off before reaching up and putting it on Adrien's head. It covered his messy hair and stood out against the blond strands and his pale-looking skin.

"There," she proclaimed.

He blinked.

"A reason to come back," Marinette stated, taking a step back to admire the new piece of clothing on him. "I'll need my hat back to keep my ears warm."

He touched the hat with a small smile. "You will, won't you?"

By the time Alya and Nino had come over, Adrien had calmed down a little. He was jittery still, looking around and staring at anyone that came too close, but Marinette wasn't going to inform him who it was anyone time soon.

It wouldn't do them any favours.

Marinette ducked out first, saying she'd promised to meet up with her other friend.

No one protested that.

The sun set before the stores closed in the winter. They could've stayed for a few hours more, loitering and staying near the warm areas before returning home, but that didn't happen.

Adrien followed the plan.

Ten minutes later, Marinette text him.

He used that to pretend it was his parents.

The problem would be when Adrien was alone. Marinette had told him to stay near the lights in the street, to keep in sight of other people, even if it meant that it took him longer than normal to make it back home.

She text him not to go home; rather, to take the other turning down the street, away from the houses.

Adrien looked as comfortable as any other teenager walking home. He adjusted his hat constantly, fiddled with his sleeves before stuffing his hands in his pockets, and looked entirely unsure on what he was doing.

If anything, he made the perfect bait.

On the other hand, the demon looked perfectly at ease, talking to someone on the phone as they kept a safe distance away from him. There was nothing suspicious about them, and if Marinette hadn't noticed them in the store, she doubted she would've caught on too soon.

It was getting darker.

Marinette text him to turn down a specific street with a broken light.

He didn't send anything back.

She knew he was safe.

Marinette used her bandalore to close the gap and get higher by wrapping the string around a branch, propelling herself forward to kick the demon's back and cause them to fall forwards.

The bandalore was wrapped around them tightly before they could react.

Surprise was all that she had on her side, after all.

Adrien made a strangled noise as he turned around to spot her, but she couldn't take any chances of being open in the street. She shot him a salute, perhaps smiling a bit too much, before pulling on the bandalore and choking the demon with enough force to snap their neck.

It gave her a few seconds of freedom to move her arm again, causing the body to be whipped to the side, connecting with the brick wall of a building with enough force that she was sure that their ribs were hurt.

Marinette didn't need to look behind her to know that Adrien had run away.

It's what she'd told him to do.

Snapping their neck again for good measure, Marinette used the bandalore to toss the body on top of the building. It was a library that was closed down, a two-story building with a flat roof. It was high enough that people passing by from the ground wouldn't see it.

There wasn't any lights for someone to clearly see on top from their window either as it was a good enough distance away.

She doubted that anyone had a telescope.

It was a gamble when she had to unravel them to use the bandalore to get onto the flat roof herself, not wasting any time before taking out her blade and stabbing it through the first heart.

For moments like that, she considered using the second blade to pierce through the rest—

It wasn't worth it.

If she died there, one of the two would be protected.

With the bandalore, she had the string wrapped around their neck again, snapping it and rendering them dead for a short enough time for her to manually wrap the string around their body. Too tight for them to move, keeping them still in place.

She didn't take the knife out.

Instead, Marinette crouched down, ripping off part of their clothing and bundling it up in her hand.

When their body died, within that short period of time where they regenerated and came back as good as new, she thrust the fabric in their mouth to try and muffle the noise.

She knew from Chloé that their tongue would regrow if she cut it off.

It wasn't worth the hassle.

There was the fact that she didn't know what to do.

The location was too close to Adrien; he didn't walk the specific way often, but she didn't want to take any chances, did she?

It was too busy for her to lug a body across the city.

While she pondered her choices, she kept tightening her hold to snap their neck, a repetitive rhythm that she kept up with her right hand while her other went to unzip her pocket and fetch her phone.

She had messages from Adrien.

Rather than trying to type with her non-dominant hand, she called him.

He answered on the third ring, sounding breathless. "Marinette?"

"Hey," she greeted. "You home yet?"

"I—yeah," he stuttered out. "Are... are you?"

She glanced down at the body. "No."

"Are you okay?" Adrien quietly asked.

"I'm fine," she told him. Her legs hurt a bit from the swing she'd taken to kick them, but it wasn't something that would bother her too much. The pain would be gone by the morning. "Did I scare you?"

He breathed out audibly. "You didn't give me any warning."

"I told you about the light not working," Marinette pointed out. "It's called reading between the lines."

Adrien exclaimed, "I'm not good at that!"

"I can tell," she remarked, tightening her hold and cutting off the demon's airway before it was crushed in an instant. "And you learned to read before me. That's shameful."

He sounded rattled as he asked, "What's—what's that sound?"

"Oh." It hadn't occurred to her that he'd _hear_. "Nothing."

"Your voice went higher," he accused.

"No, it didn't," she denied, quickly realising that it was probably a bad idea to talk to him while she was in the middle of something. "You're imagining it."

Adrien wasn't letting it go. "You're lying."

She made a disapproving noise. "Now that's just rude."

There wasn't a better option. She needed to kill them like any other person, but she was limited to what she could do. Marinette wasn't going to stab their hearts and have them disintegrate when they were so close to him.

Staying there for hours until the majority of the city went to bed wasn't the answer.

"Marinette, I—" Adrien started to say.

"I can't keep this up for long," she interrupted, watching the body slump and cease struggling. "I'm a bit preoccupied."

His voice was the high one then. "What's going on?"

"They need to be further away," Marinette truthfully answered. "I should've told you to go somewhere else, but I didn't think you'd be able to shake Alya and Nino for long, and I didn't want you to be alone with them for too long. It's just—I can't exactly fling them across the city."

"I destroyed the phone," he blurted.

She wasn't sure she heard that right. "What?"

"They dropped the phone when you—you did that," he hastily explained, taking in a hushed tone that made it obvious he was scared of being overheard. "I smashed it and threw it in someone's bin—not anyone from my street."

That hadn't crossed her mind.

She wondered whether she'd left phones behind before.

"Thank you."

Adrien asked softly, "Do you think you'll be finished soon?"

There was always one option.

"Maybe," she whispered back. "I need to hang up, though. I'll text you when I can."

His parting words were, "Be safe."

Of all the demons, there was one that she trusted to the extent of being so close to Adrien. The range of sensing Adrien had to be similar to that of knowing where other demons were.

That was what she was hoping for.

"Hey," Marinette greeted when Chloé answered her call. "Any chance you can pick me up? I've got a present for you."

Chloé didn't say hello. "Is it even worth my time?"

"I don't know," she started, sounding thoughtful. "How does a few hearts sound to you?"

There was a beat of silence. "I thought you were off being a child."

"I saw someone I recognised from the nightclub," Marinette lied, hoping that her voice wasn't high like it had been with Adrien earlier. Her heart wasn't beating fast in her heart—she had the demon stuck, unable to leave, and she was only seeing whether she could make the situation easier. "Might as well be useful, right?"

Chloé sighed. "Do I have to?"

"It's free power, bitch," she retorted. "I just need a ride."

"You fucking owe me."

Chloé hung up before she could say she was already doing her a favour.

She text the address.

It was almost half an hour later when Chloé's car came into view. Marinette poked her head over the edge of the building—still holding onto the bandalore—and called out, "Can you get the sheet out of the boot?"

The dim lighting couldn't hide Chloé's displeased expression. "Why?"

"I want to take them with us," she replied, using her free hand to gesture with her thumb over her shoulder. "This is too close to a kid from school's house."

Chloé scowled. "Why does that _matter_?"

"I don't know?" Marinette shot back, talking perhaps a tad too loud. "What if they're mad when they wake up or something? They could—I don't know, smash a car window."

The silence was ruined by the noise of struggles, then she pulled on the bandalore and broke their neck again.

"Are you fucking serious?" Chloé exclaimed.

She had the gall to say, "They're really proud that this neighbourhood has a low crime rate."

Somehow, she didn't laugh at that.

"Fucking _fine_," Chloé grumbled, stomping to her car and popping open the trunk.

Without any prompting, Chloé opened up the back doors to the vehicle, throwing the waterproof over the seats.

It was sold for the use of putting it on a mattress, but after the summer, Chloé invested in it for her car.

Marinette threw the body off the top of the building.

It landed on the pavement with barely any noise. There was a lot of blood coming out of their head, though.

Chloé stood there, arms crossed and refusing to help as she dragged the body closer to the car.

For all the skills she had, physical strength wasn't something Marinette was lifted with. She had some muscle, sure, but she looked close to malnourished and clearly wasn't being taken care of properly.

She could throw a grown man with her bandalore, but she could barely push him over by herself.

"I'll pay you," Marinette offered.

Chloé narrowed her eyes. "How much?"

She didn't hesitate. "Enough for you to buy a new pair of shoes."

And that was how Marinette was sat in the back on top of the body of the demon. They were face down, still entangled in her bandalore, and the only change was that she'd taken her sword back and stowed it away.

Snapping the neck was the least messy way to kill them repetitively.

She didn't want to clean up Chloé's car any more than it already needed to.

Chloé took them close to the outskirts of the city, a rougher area where there wasn't any cameras when Marinette tossed the body out of the car. It took a pitiful amount of time for the two hearts to be crushed by Chloé's hand.

Marinette quipped, "Are you going to rip your nails off to clean the blood?"

Chloé didn't find it funny.

It was a genuine question.

The blood in the back of the car was minimal, some dried onto the leather seats by the time they made it back to Chloé's driveway, but Marinette was going to leave it until the next day to clean.

No one was going to look in and see it.

Her legs didn't hurt when she sat down on her bed, stretching out.

She sent a message to Adrien saying she wanted her hat back.

He told her to come and get it.

Because of her drooping eyes, she suggested another night instead.

He wasn't upset.

-x-

Adrien was looking at her more.

When she noticed him, he turned away, directing his attention elsewhere; at his schoolwork on the desk, to his lunch on the table, or his cat that always seemed glued to his side when she came over to visit.

She didn't question it.

It seemed like a normal thing that was bound to happen. They spent a lot of time together, tentatively getting to know each other, and the amount she knew about him turned from double to triple that of Alya and Nino.

Marinette knew what Adrien looked like when he was nervous, when he was terrified and afraid of dying, and choking back tears. The range of emotions she'd seen from him made hers she'd shown him in return seem pitiful.

She was still trying to understand how to express herself properly.

There had never been someone that wanted to hear about her problems, not since Aloys.

And yet, Adrien was genuine when he asked how she was feeling after she'd informed him of her healed injuries. At first, she'd been confused, thinking that he was referring to the already healed wounds, but it became clear that wasn't the case when he'd gently reached out, touching her arm and asked whether she wanted to talk about what had happened.

Marinette knew she was stunted; emotionally and physically. The way she was brought up couldn't be blamed for every reason, not when she knew that she could've sought out a different lifestyle, perhaps would've been a foster child once getting the attention of the police when she was younger.

That wasn't an option any more.

Almost everything about her was fabricated. Her friends thought she had a troubled relationship with her grandfather, her only family member left, and barring Adrien, they were under the impression that she was so sheltered that she wasn't allowed to do everything else other children near her age were allowed to do while growing up.

When they had to explain bowling to her, there was no mistaking the sad expression on Alya's face.

It wasn't pity that time, though.

Valentine's wasn't as big a deal as films made it out to be.

All that happened was that Nino had brought some chocolates in for Alya, and she'd whipped out his favourite food for them to share over lunch.

It was the same as every other day.

Alya and Nino had plans for the weekend, so it was Adrien that suggested that she come over to his place instead.

As his parents were home, they had to have the bedroom door open. It was the second time she was there to their knowledge, and she'd never gone into his bathroom before.

Plagg tried to follow her in.

After two months of visiting once a week, at least, Plagg had brightened up to her. He'd never been that hostile in the first place, though, more interested in Adrien and playing instead of inspecting the new person in the room.

When Adrien noticed how nervous she was with petting Plagg, he was more than happy to give her pointers, explaining which parts he liked to be pet, all while smiling at her in encouragement.

It was strange to connect Plagg to the cat that Adrien had gotten when he'd left her in the first place.

The downside of visiting with the knowledge of his parents was that Adrien didn't offer her his slippers.

"It would seem a bit weird, wouldn't it?" he mused, placing a stuffed toy down on the floor to keep the door propped open. "I don't give them to anyone else. If I play favourites, they'll never let me hear the end of it."

Marinette smiled. "Is that so?"

He beamed. "It'll be our secret, yeah?"

And it was, along with all the other things.

Adrien was trustworthy.

The secrets that he kept for her were adding up, and he was bailing her out at school when caught in a lie or she didn't know how to respond. He was constantly inserting himself into the conversation, either changing the topic and saving her entirely, or coming up with a lie on the spot.

He was a lot better at lying than her.

It was an accident when he stumbled, causing another student to trip over and slam their face on the ground.

The cuts didn't heal instantly.

Adrien wasn't impressed when she gave him a thumbs up.

He never hurt anyone else on purpose, not even when he was mad. If he had an argument with someone, he clammed up and didn't say anything rather than confronting them, and he certainly wasn't the type to start shouting at them.

While he was open with crying, wasn't embarrassed to do it in front of her when they were practically strangers to each other, that didn't mean that he wanted to burst into tears whenever someone raised their voices at him.

Adrien text her one evening to say that he got in a fight with his father.

She didn't ask how he was doing, instead asking whether he wanted something specific to eat. The only limitations was that it had to be something that didn't smell too much.

It would've been a disaster if any of his parents woke up later that evening to see their son having a late snack with an unknown girl in his room.

She bought his request from a bakery before it closed. They were wrapped up and placed into a thin cardboard box with the logo of the bakery on it, and Marinette stared down at it for a while with a frown, wondering how she was going to get it into his room without damaging the contents too much.

When they opened them, the icing was crushed, but the shape was still there.

Adrien smiled at her with whipped cream around his mouth.

She grinned right back at him.

"If this is what I get for fighting with my father, I might do it more often," he joked.

Marinette rolled her eyes. "What was it about?"

"What I want to study," he replied, using the back of his hand to wipe his mouth. "He wants me to do something more—well, science-related. I don't want to."

"Then, don't," she said.

"I'm not going to," Adrien stated, wiping at his face again, smearing the cream but not getting it all off. "Mother doesn't care, so it's fine. He'll get the stick out of his ass eventually."

"I need to apply to the same ones as you," Marinette said, stabbing at her cake with more force than necessary. "So it can't be art."

He laughed. "Yeah, okay."

It spoke wonders that he wasn't protesting to that. He'd relaxed around her, no longer offended when she said that she'd checked the application to check his location and keep track of him, and he no longer protested her following him to make sure he was safe. If anything, he'd given in and accepted it.

She never thought she'd get that far.

In the plan of going to school with him, it hadn't really crossed her mind that she'd still have the chance to grow up with him.

Between the two of them, he was the one that had grown the most in height.

Eating food together in his bedroom became the norm for them.

Sometimes, Adrien stashed snacks in his room for them to eat, but he couldn't exactly keep a whole plate of food in there without there being questions.

Marinette offered, "I could always bring something."

"Save your money," Adrien immediately rejected.

Her smile showed her teeth. "It's not really my money, is it?"

That argument had him giving in, as long as she promised to be careful with her stealing.

It was a little endearing that he thought she'd get caught.

"I'll be fine," she told him. "I've perfected it by now."

He didn't look convinced.

Later in the week, when she took out the bright-coloured wallet that she'd nabbed a few days earlier, Adrien stared at it incredulously before laughing.

"You're really flaunting your crimes?" he asked, gesturing wildly towards the wallet. "I could tell the police. I know your all of your secrets."

She snorted. "Not all of them."

"I don't?" he questioned, confusion clear in his tone. "I—that was silly of me to think, wasn't it?"

To be fair to him, there wasn't a lot that he didn't know.

So, she decided to be honest. "I can tell you one thing, if you want."

Adrien frowned. "You're not telling me out of guilt, are you?"

"No, I just didn't know how to bring it up," she easily replied, leaning back against the sofa and bringing her knees up to her chest to be more comfortable. "I doubt it'll really come as a surprise to you."

"What is it?" he asked, curious. "You're not going to tell me you're actually younger than me, are you?"

She blinked. "I might be, I don't know."

"Not what I meant."

With a furrowed brow, she questioned, "What did you mean?"

"I meant—" Adrien cut himself off, touching the nape of his neck and averting his gaze for a moment as he took in a deep breath. Then, he looked her in the eyes as he elaborated, "I meant younger than that because you—you're really small."

She didn't hesitate to reply, "Pretty sure I was malnourished for most of my life."

He grimaced. "Yeah, I figured."

Marinette looked down to where her legs were hidden beneath her baggy jeans that were intentionally designed like that—the belt was on for extra safety. "Is it that obvious?"

"I wouldn't say yes," he said slowly, hand falling down to his lap as he straightened up. "You just—you're really small, you know? And thin."

There was no denying that. "Must look good with my bruises, then."

"It's your pale skin that makes them stand out more," he told her. "No wonder Alya gets so worked up about you."

She raised her eyebrows. "But not you?"

"I try not to worry about you," he admitted, pulling on his sleeve and fidgeting. "You—you're out there doing things that would keep me up at night. I couldn't sleep after you killed that demon that was following me before."

It was her was automatic response to say, "I'm fine."

Somehow, it had come to be a catchphrase of hers when she wasn't sure how to reply to something.

"You are," Adrien started hesitantly, curling his fingers around his sleeve. "But... I'm scared that one day, you won't text me to say that you're okay."

She didn't say that she thought the same for him.

Marinette could only look into his eyes, feeling her own grow hot and become irritated, and she blinked to try and fight back the inevitable tears.

Being with Adrien made her feel more open.

She wasn't experienced at that.

But with him—it felt okay. It wasn't a weakness to talk about feelings, no matter how hard it was to do, and she realised that his gentle embrace when either of them grew teary wasn't something to be scared of.

It was something she cherished.

She didn't flinch when he moved closer to hug her, making his movements obvious and giving her the chance to pull away. Marinette leaned into him instead, closing her eyes as she rested her forehead against his shoulder.

Despite the position not being the most comfortable—not when her knees were digging into him from how she'd flopped towards him in an instant—neither of them complained.

Her voice was a whisper as she said, "I can't promise anything."

She could hear him swallow. "Okay."

Marinette didn't need to say that she was doing it for him.

Adrien knew that by that point, no matter how much he protested to that fact, he was aware that he wasn't going to change her mind any time soon.

For her, it was her goal in life.

It had never been about education, spending time with other teenagers her age, or laughing and exchanging playful insults over video games.

She was teetering on the edge of questioning what she was doing with her life.

But when she looked at him—and really looked, to see how unblemished his skin was from lack of scars, the way he rarely had bruises, and the lack of callouses on his hands, she was reminded that he was the reason for it all.

"I'd do anything for you," Marinette confessed, still resting her head on his shoulder.

His response was barely audible. "I know."

There was so much she wanted to say, to be able to put into words to express how she felt—

"I know you're not going to listen to me," Adrien started, hesitance clear in his tone. "But I want you to try and do something for me."

She moved back and sat upright, her legs still touching his from their close distance. "What is it?"

"If there's—if there's ever a time where either of us will get seriously injured," he whispered, meeting her gaze. "I want you to be safe."

Confusion was all she felt. "Why?"

"I don't want you to get hurt, not because of me," he implored, gently reaching out and putting his hand on top of her knee. "I'm not worth it."

Marinette frowned. "I can heal, you can't."

"That doesn't mean you should get hurt because of _me_," he pleaded, shaking his head, smile not reaching his eyes. "I know you won't listen to me, but—but there's more to you than just being there for me. I'm not everything."

It was typical of him to say such a thing.

No matter how many times he said it, it wasn't going to get through to her.

She wetted her lips. "I don't want there to be."

"Marinette." He let out a shaky breath. "You're your own person, you know? I don't know what my grandfather had you thinking—"

"I'm not doing this for him," she interrupted, irritation swelling inside her at the implication. "Not any more, at least. I'm doing this because I _want_ to. You know this."

His eyes looked watery. "I know that you're worth more."

"Adrien," she said, tentatively putting her hand on top of his. "You're not going to change my mind."

"I know," he whispered, clenching his eyes shut with a breathless laugh escaping him that didn't sound sincere at all. "You—you mean so much to us, but you don't want to acknowledge that, do you?"

She tried to swallow the lump in her throat. "I'm supposed to be telling you my secret."

His voice almost sounded bitter. "There's nothing I can say, is there?"

"No," she admitted. "I'm stubborn."

"You are," he confirmed, smile looking more genuine than before, though it still didn't reach his eyes. "You're stubborn, refuse to listen to anyone else, but you're—you're really great, too."

She cleared her throat. "Well, yeah."

Slowly, Adrien linked their fingers together. "I'm sorry I was scared of you before."

The action wasn't one that they'd done before. She stared down at their joined hands in wonder before remembering that he'd addressed her.

She didn't look him in the eyes as she replied, "I did murder someone in front of you."

"Is it really murder when they regenerate?" Adrien said, delivering it in an almost deadpan way. "That's your argument, but I'm starting to understand it more."

With a smile, she glanced up. "You're agreeing with my violent ways?"

"I'm not fully onboard with it," he admitted in a whisper. "But—actually seeing it while _knowing_ what was going on still scared me as much as before."

"I wouldn't let anything happen to you," she assured him. "Not again."

He shook his head, causing his hair to fall down to his eyebrows. "I was scared for you."

"That's not going to do you any good," she quietly told him. "I get hurt a lot."

"You don't want me to get hurt, right?"

She frowned. "No."

Adrien wetted his lips. "Then, try not to get hurt because it hurts me right back."

After waiting a moment to see whether he was going to say he was joking, Marinette burst out into laughter.

Adrien joined her, showing that he wasn't offended.

"That's the route you're going to take?" she asked with her shoulders shaking.

He gently squeezed her hand. "Yeah, I am."

"You make me feel like a kid," Marinette admitted. "With you caring about me like this."

It brought her back to that summer, all those years ago on his grandfather's land.

"I'll ground you if you disobey me," he quipped.

She beamed. "I've never been grounded."

"I'd say it's horrible, but it's not that bad when it's just being sent to your room," he revealed to her in a whisper, going as far as to use his free hand to cup one side of his mouth, as though it would stop anyone else from hearing it. "It's when your phone gets taken away when it's bad."

Marinette raised her eyebrows. "That's not just a film thing?"

"It's real," he confirmed with a laugh. "I've been good, though. I know you'd go mad if I didn't respond."

"I wouldn't go _mad—_"

"You would," he insisted, adjusting their joined fingers. "You'd tell me I'm putting myself in danger."

She sniffed. "Your stupidity does that for you already."

"I'll try and be good to you," Adrien said before jolting upright, looking startled. "I—_for _you. To not you."

Marinette stared at him. "What?"

"Forget it," he mumbled, running a hand through his hair and revealing the red at the top of his ears. "I'm good enough to hear your secret, right? Out with it."

"Oh, right." For a while, she'd thought that that had been forgotten. "It's... I didn't think it would go on for this long, or that you'd be close enough to find out. It's about my grandfather."

He tensed. "What?"

"He's not actually related to me," Marinette admitted with a shrug.

Adrien's voice was high-pitched from surprise. "_What_?"

"It was a convenient lie," she explained, gesturing towards her face. "The looks, you know? It's easier to fake an identity when there's someone there to back you up, no matter how untrue it really is."

His eyes were wide. "You're _not_ related?"

"No, dude," Marinette confirmed, taking a leaf from his book and adjusted their hands, trying to avoid them growing clammy from being joined for so long. "He gave me a place to stay for a while because he owed Aloys—your grandfather—but it was never meant to be permanent."

"Then—" Adrien visibly struggled for words. "You don't have anyone?"

She swallowed.

It was with a fluttering in her chest that she asked, "I have you, right?"

The bright smile that she got in return was all the answer she needed.

It wasn't enough for him.

"Yes," he whispered, using his other hand to clasp the one he was already holding, both of his covering hers. "You're—you have me, okay? I'm not going anywhere."

It was a lie she wanted to believe.

"You're too good, you know?" Marinette murmured softly, feeling nothing but fondness for him.

There wasn't much of a difference between the clumsy boy that had barged into her life and shared his toys and food with her without complaint and the kind teenager that had tentatively struck up a friendship after the rocky start to him noticing her.

The two first impressions he'd had of her were equally bad—the second even more so—but he was still reaching out to her and pulling her in.

"So, so good," she whispered.

His sounded utterly sincere as he said, "You are, too."

She knew it wasn't true.

-x-

The hand holding became a thing.

It was only whenever they were alone, and other than one time, it was in the comfort of his home during the evenings that they spent together. He'd reached out to hold her hand while they were walking home—after Alya and Nino had ventured off in their own way—and when she'd looked towards him curiously, he was staring ahead.

If it wasn't for the red that had appeared on his ears, she would've thought it was completely natural.

She wondered whether he held anyone else's hand.

As quickly as it came, it stopped because of a fault of her own.

Marinette broke her hand.

At least, she thought it wasn't just her hand. Her whole arm was throbbing and causing her to choke back tears as she used the bandalore to tie the demon up, resorting to fumbling with her non-dominant hand to get it all done.

Thankfully, supernatural weapons didn't seem to care about which hand they were in.

The blade did, however. She had to clumsily hold it in an awkward grip before stabbing through the hearts.

To her annoyance, the demon regenerated the first heart in the time it took her to find the third, so she had to start the process again.

There was no summoning of Chloé for her to absorb the power when almost all of her arm hurt as much as she did. She surely had cuts and bruises alongside the same side of her body that had been slammed into the wall, a result of the demon violently pushing her aside, and she knew that there was blood in her hair, a sure sign that there was an injury there, too.

The pain from her hand was overpowering the rest.

For a moment, as she stood over the ash that was slowly being brushed away with the wind, Marinette considered not sending Adrien an update on her condition at all.

It was the worst it had been since they'd made that deal.

The only reason she did send a text, bluntly saying that she broke her hand, was because she didn't want to lose his trust.

Adrien's reply was instantaneous, telling her to come over.

She kept pressing the wrong buttons on the screen.

Adrien's home was closer than Chloé's in that moment of time, and with his promise of having a first aid kit stashed in his bedroom, she set out towards him.

Her arm hurt every time she moved.

She had to weigh the pros and cons of using the bandalore to travel or not. It would surely hurt in the process, but it would get her there so much quicker—

With the addition of feeling nauseated, she closed her eyes after flicking her wrist.

She dry-heaved when she gracefully landed.

It took her longer than normal to get to his. Marinette's vision was blurry when she steadied herself on the roof outside his window, clutching onto anything she could for balance in an attempt to calm down.

She was pretty sure she was sweaty.

Adrien was there to open the window in seconds.

She'd forgotten to text him that she was outside before getting too close.

That night included Adrien panicking and fretting, using his phone for medical research before stressing out that he couldn't go to the hospital like everything was suggesting, and despite her telling him that she probably didn't need a sling, he made her one out of his blanket after following a tutorial online.

At the time she couldn't fully appreciate how sweet him worrying over her was.

If anything, he was the panicked one, while she was just tired and aching.

He gave her some chocolate, saying it would cheer her up.

It was her favourite kind.

By Monday, her hand was covered in bruises, but she could move it.

Adrien wouldn't let her carry anything heavy while they were at school. If they were in class together, he snatched her bag and put her belongings in it himself—at one point rushing across the classroom to do it, as they weren't seated together—and she indulged him.

It was so strange to have someone hovering protectively over her.

He went as far as to talk to their teacher so she'd have to sit out from playing sports for the day.

Although it meant she sat off to the side and did her homework for another class, it gave her the chance to see who's scuffed knees healed quickly.

Everyone's did.

She could admit that she was being paranoid.

Having Adrien doing things for her was a drastic difference to her time with Chloé.

The months had caused the attacks to dwindle down. No one had come to Chloé's home for weeks, almost months, and the interest in her and started to cease.

There were others that had fully regenerated in that time, those that were weaker than her and easier targets. It was common knowledge that anyone was fair game as long as no one else witnessed it.

It was a vicious lifestyle.

While Adrien and his friends taught her more about social media, video games, and other interests that a lot of others their age shared, Chloé was doing the opposite.

"You could always cut the back of someone's ankle, you know?" Chloé suggested, filing her nails while sitting on the edge of her bed with one thigh on top of the other. "If you can't get in a killing blow. The pain's really distracting, so it'll probably be long enough for your weird yo-yo shit."

She frowned from where she was on a stool at Chloé's vanity table. "I've never thought of that before."

Chloé blew on her nails. "I'm not surprised."

"I'll keep that in mind," she muttered, looking through the containers for another concealer that was close to the colour she'd had before. "Any other tips, oh great one?"

"You need to bribe me to get that."

She snorted. "I haven't got anything good to offer right now."

Chloé's tone was blasé. "Not even if I tell you that I saw a demon working at a cinema?"

"Working _at_ one?" she questioned, bewildered. "Why?"

From what she knew, demons liked living a more upper-class lifestyle, resorting to what they needed to do have that happen. It wasn't often they advertised themselves on television—not when it could attract too much attention if they disappear to get a new identity, looking too similar to the missing celebrity—and on the other end, Chloé had turned her nose up and said no one would willingly work an awful job.

She assumed the cinema one had to be one from Chloé's remark of it.

"Disguised as a kid," Chloé replied, holding her hand up to inspect her nails in the light. "A bit older than you, I guess. Fucking weird that they're trying to blend in when they can't get spots or anything."

She stared. "You what?"

Chloé placed her hand underneath her chin and smiled, the pose more suited for a photoshoot. "Have you even seen my complexion be bad?"

Marinette lamely said, "You wear make-up."

"Because I like it," Chloé corrected, letting her hand drop as she raised her head haughtily. "I'm beautiful without it, thank you."

"You're supposed to be a being of evil, not beauty," she retorted, eyes darting to the abundance of make-up that was displayed on the vanity, neatly lined up and organised.

"My looks are my best feature," Chloé boldly stated, moving her hair over her shoulder with a flick of her head. "And they're what I was born with, I don't know. Some other demons are fuck ugly, just like you humans."

She squinted. "You won the genetics lottery, but not your personality."

Chloé's grin was all teeth. "Who needs to be nice when you can break someone's arm when they touch you without your consent?"

"That says a lot about you."

"I'm sure you'll get there someday," Chloé told her, crossing the distance between them to mockingly pat her shoulder. "Maybe your weird ass healing will turn into something more useful—or you could weaponise it. That could be fun."

Marinette looked down to her hand that was covered in barely-there bruises. "That sounds painful."

"Pain is part of the process." Chloé plucked a concealer from the back of the container, placing it down on the vanity. "This is your new one, idiot. Were you even looking?"

She scowled. "Fuck off."

"You could look a lot older if you actually dressed right," Chloé remarked, taking ahold of Marinette's chin and forcefully moving her head. "Are you happy looking like a fetus?"

Marinette slapped her hand away. "I don't see the point."

"I wouldn't have to age down as much around you to avoid looking like I'm grooming you," was the response to that.

She pulled a face. "No one would think that."

"People are depraved," Chloé pointed out. "You'd be surprised at what they're thinking."

Marinette scoffed. "Right, because you're totally able to hear them."

There wasn't an answer to that.

Incredulous, she stared at Chloé. "Right?"

Selecting a lipstick from her collection, Chloé looked in the mirror and started to apply it as she said, "You tell me."

Marinette was torn between disbelief and amusement. "You can _not_."

Chloé tilted her head to make sure the application was even. "Are you sure about that?"

"Pretty sure you would've rubbed it in my face already if you could," she snapped back, gesturing at her. "You love showing off. I'm pretty sure I know everything about demons right now."

And when Chloé smiled, there wasn't any lipstick on her teeth. "Do you?"

"Almost everything," she corrected. "There's no way there's some magical mind-reading involved. You're just, like, stupidly strong, that's all."

With a laugh, Chloé responded, "Yes, true."

"True?" she asked for clarification.

"There's no mind-reading," Chloé revealed, a smug smile still on her reddened lips. "But I had you going there, didn't I?"

"I will stab you," she threatened.

"Wait until I have two hearts, then you're welcome to do what you want," Chloé said, patting her head mockingly once more. "You'd have earned the right to maim me at least once by your own hand—a reward for you."

She deadpanned, "I'm so happy."

Chloé looked amused more than anything.

It seemed like the perfect moment to ask a question that had been nagging her.

"Why aren't you lava?" she blurted without any tact.

To her credit, Chloé only blinked at her. "What?"

"Before you—you told me it was like suicide, right?" Marinette asked before realising what she'd said. "I mean, that's what you really said at the time. Almost word for word. But I don't... I don't get how you can get like _that_?"

"Because it sounds fucking awful," Chloé replied, seeming not to be upset from the topic. "Consider it like hibernating, yeah? You can only do it if you've got four hearts, and you're—it's said it's like you're asleep in the ground, not aware of what's happening."

Four was the maximum that she'd heard of demons having.

The demon that had killed Chloé had to have had that many, or was close, from how different their strength levels had been.

"You've never had four," Marinette murmured, thoughtful. "And you—you're old."

"I'm average in my age only," Chloé remarked. "It's what some us aspire to be when we're old and bored of life. I'm not one of them."

If she was immortal, she imagined eternal slumber didn't sound too bad.

The sleep just happened to involve consuming demons that it came across.

She persisted. "How did we summon it?"

Chloé shrugged. "I'm assuming a demon died. We consume our own kind for power, yeah? Then, it'll go back to resting when there's none left around."

Marinette made a thoughtful noise. "Demons are weird."

"We're simple," Chloé corrected, putting her hands on her hips. "Violence and shadiness is what we've lived on forever."

"Oh, those are also your best features," she complimented, raising her thumb in approval. "You're a great role model."

"I should hope so." Chloé sniffed. "You might as well be my protégé at this point."

With a grin, she asked, "I'm a demon in training?"

"You're something weird," Chloé replied, eyes glancing down to her bruised hand. "Might as well guide you in the right direction."

She nodded seriously. "Violence and murder."

Chloé snickered. "Exactly."

They were two different extremes.

Adrien worried. He wanted her to avoid getting hurt, continued to insist that her life was more valuable than his—that she shouldn't put a price to someone's life in the first place—and offered her plasters and cream from his first aid kit when she came over injured.

Chloé gave her pointers.

When she took her advice to slice an ankle when she made her presence known, she must've applied too much pressure before the blade went through the bone and flesh without any resistance, slicing the foot clean off.

There was a lot of blood.

The severed foot turned to ash when a new one had appeared on the demon.

That solved the theory of endless body parts being stockpiled.

Marinette knew that what she was doing wasn't good from other's perspective, but it was right to her. And when Chloé was there, sarcastically clapping or telling her what she could've done better while her whole arm was covered in blood from crushing another heart, her smile was always genuine.

She didn't feel used.

The benefit was mutual between them, and the time they spent together was fun.

Chloé had the bright idea of trying to teach her to throw knives.

"Your knife's tiny enough for it," Chloé remarked. "And you have no problem with the weight, right?"

"I don't," she confirmed, taking out the blade in mention by reaching under her clothes. "Do you?"

"Do I?" Chloé raised her eyebrows. "Are you going to give me permission to touch your bullshit knife?"

Marinette grinned. "I trust you not to stab me any more."

"I might run off with it," Chloé said, tapping her chin in a thoughtful gesture. "This would give me a one-up against everyone else, right? Might as well use it to my advantage."

Meeting her gaze, she plainly threatened her with, "I really would kill you for that."

Chloé laughed. "I'm not going to steal your toy."

It wasn't a bad decision, was it?

Chloé had died for her.

She could trust her to hold it for a moment, just to see if the size would change.

"Go on," she said, propping her elbow on the table and resting her chin on her hand. "I'll allow it this once."

Chloé's look was one of pure loathing. "If you keep talking to me like that, I'll strangle you."

"I've had enough of that already, thanks," she quipped.

Chloé rolled her eyes. "That's not your kink, then."

"I'm a literal child," she rebuked. "I'm not interested in that."

"How sad." Chloé sighed. "The only fisting going on with you is the murder kind."

Marinette squinted. "I don't know what that means and I don't want to."

The glee that came over Chloé's expression was what clued her in that she'd said the wrong thing.

After a few minutes of Marinette bluntly shooting down the offers for Chloé to tell her all about the sexual exploits she could get up, they got to Chloé pulling the blade from the cover.

It was the same size.

"This—" Chloé cut herself off, puzzled as she gazed at the knife in her hand. "That's weird."

She asked, "What?"

"It feels similar but... not?" Chloé turned the blade over, running her finger over the sharp edge and cutting her skin, droplets of blood steadily falling to the floor for a while before the cut healed over. "Where did you get this?"

"Somewhere," she vaguely responded.

Chloé frowned. "Did you steal this from someone?"

"No," she shot back, crossing her arms in a defensive way. "It was entrusted to me."

"To a child."

It wasn't amusing when her own defence was parroted back to her. "Why?"

"Wait." Chloé placed the blade on the table instead of in the holder. "I'll go see if I've still got it somewhere."

And with that, Chloé wandered off into her bedroom. The sound of objects being moved and shoved aside soon filled the air, and Marinette stayed at the table for a few minutes before getting up to investigate when it was clear that Chloé wasn't coming back any time soon.

She peered in the doorway to see Chloé on her knees, reaching under the bed to pull out storage boxes, frowning before getting the next one out and searching through the contents.

"What are you looking for?" she asked.

"My sword," Chloé responded.

She blinked. "Your—what?"

"My fucking sword," Chloé repeated, making a noise of frustration and tipping the next box over. The contents fell nosily to the floor, some items rolling away and ended up a metre or so away. "It should be here. I wouldn't have left it at my last place."

Marinette was baffled. "You have a _sword_?"

"Yes," Chloé grumbled. "I should. Somewhere."

They'd known each other for almost two years.

Chloé had never used anything but her body. Although fists were useful, when she was stronger, she used to enjoy breaking another demon's ribcage with a kick.

Her voice came out loud. "Why the fuck haven't you been using it?"

"It's useless," was the response to that.

It made her even more confused.

"_What_?"

The wardrobe was the next victim for being ransacked. The boxes at the bottom were turned upside down, trinkets and accessories scattered across the floor, then Chloé pulled out the drawer completely and looked close to throwing it against the wall when she didn't find what she wanted.

Chloé stared down at the empty drawer in disbelief. "I fucking left it."

"That... sucks?" Marinette offered her insincere condolences.

"That was worth _so much_."

It held no meaning to her, though. A weapon had never been mentioned, never glimpsed during their time of killing together, and she had no understanding of what it truly meant.

To Marinette, it meant nothing.

"I've had that since I was, like, truly your age," Chloé muttered, throwing her drawer aside and promptly leaving her wrecked room. "This is fucking stupid."

She trailed out after her. "Sorry?"

"I'm going to have to try and find a fucking blacksmith now," Chloé continued to say, angrily putting the kettle down with more force than necessary before putting it on. Then, she turned towards her, looking slightly crazed as she rhetorically asked, "Do you know how fucking hard that's going to be?"

Marinette wasn't sure whether to stay quiet or not. "No?"

"No, you don't," Chloé agreed, bobbing her head in agreement to her own words. "It's going to require going back to that fucking nightclub to try and get information—which means, you're coming along."

"...What?"

"Yes," Chloé confirmed, not listening to her as she got a mug out from the cupboard, almost smashing it with the strength she used to put it on the counter. "I'm not getting fucking stabbed because of this."

Marinette sat on the arm of the sofa. "I literally understand nothing."

"Because you're an idiot."

"You've _never_ told me about a sword!" she exclaimed, throwing her hands up in exasperation. "Maybe—just maybe—if you give me some context, I'll understand your dilemma."

"I've never told you because I've never encountered a fucking angel," Chloé retorted, not flinching when some of the boiling water splashed her hand while pouring her drink. "It seemed stupid, right? And demon weapons can't harm demons. It's in the fucking name."

She squinted. "The name sounds like it's _for_ killing demons."

"Opposite," Chloé told her. "I can't even cut another demon with it, so what's the point of keeping it around? I'm not dumb enough to get in a fight with an angel and die."

Processing that, all she could come out with was, "Right."

"It's the same as angel weapons." Chloé exhaled loudly. "They can hurt us, but not other angels. Literally the same concept."

"Angels have _weapons_?"

-x-

Adrien went back to holding her hand.

It became part of the routine at that point, something that wasn't so odd any more.

Marinette didn't look at him curiously when he did it. Sometimes, when they were sat next to each other as a video played quietly, she was the one to take his, linking their fingers together while keeping her eyes on the screen.

He was smiling a lot more.

Adrien wasn't scared _of_ her.

He was only scared for her when she went out, but he wasn't telling her to stop.

Other than trying to get her to prioritise herself in dangerous situations, he wasn't trying to change her. He wasn't trying to correct all the things that were wrong with her—her lack of empathy, the way she couldn't relate to others—instead explaining his point of view without forcing it on her, not insisting that he was the only right one in the situation.

Being with him started to feel effortless.

He made her feel happy.

And judging from how often he wanted to spend time with her, including with his parents knowing she was there during the day at times, he felt the same way.

While she wasn't all that experienced with skinship, it was becoming natural with Adrien. From holding hands, their knees bumping against each other as they sat together, to their hands brushing when she passed the controller over to him for his help with clearing a level on a video game.

It didn't occur to her that it wasn't normal to everyone else's eyes.

She was sure it was her fault.

They'd sat down for lunch. Alya and Nino had gotten up to buy theirs while Marinette had brought in leftovers, and Adrien's mother had packed his for him. He'd gestured towards a vegetable that he didn't like, initiating a trade between the two of them, and she was more than happy to agree to it.

"Thank you," Adrien said, utterly grateful.

"It's fine," she replied, amused as he dramatically bowed his head, repeating his last words. "I'm not weak like you."

He let out a scandalised gasp. "Are you calling my tongue weak?"

Marinette wrinkled her nose. "I don't know, am I?"

"I think you are," he insisted, narrowing his eyes. "Are you trying to fight me?"

She grinned. "You sure you want to do that?"

"It's a joke!" Adrien exclaimed, shaking his head in denial. "I'm not actually trying to fight you, I swear. It's best to assume that anyone that says that to you doesn't really want you to murder them."

"Is it?" she queried.

"I promise to tell you if someone wants a deathmatch," Adrien assured her, reaching out and patting her hand in support. "I'll be your guide to everyday life."

It was a normal thing to link their fingers and hold his hand. "Aren't you already?"

Adrien's dimples showed as he smiled. "Is that my official title?"

"It doesn't sound fancy enough," Marinette mused. "You like the over-the-top things in life."

He snickered. "Like you?"

She rebutted that with, "I don't like those things."

"I meant—"

"Hey." Alya slammed her tray down with more force than necessary, startling Adrien. "You two aren't going to start making out, are you?"

Marinette's brow furrowed. "No, why?"

"I—" Adrien clearing his throat. "I don't know what you're on about."

"Right." Alya sounded amused.

Nino only whistled when he got to the table, not being as dramatic as his girlfriend.

Marinette was the one to pull her hand away to start eating her food.

The topic was changed, turning into banter that Marinette contributed to, and when she glanced at Adrien, he was looking at her with a smile.

She returned it.

It was the first time they'd held hands outside of being alone together, but it felt as normal as when they were in his bedroom.

Alya didn't think so, apparently.

"Spill," Alya demanded, turning in her chair to face her, crossing one leg on top of the other and accidentally kneeing the desk in the process. After recovering from the hiss of pain, she asked, "You are going to tell me, aren't you?"

Marinette frowned. "I don't know what you want me to say."

"Adrien likes you," Alya stated, talking slowly and pronouncing each word with extra precision. "You do know that, right?"

She tilted her head. "I should hope so?"

"Marinette." Alya breathed out audibly. "You don't see him rushing to collect my bag, do you?"

She pointed out, "He hasn't done that in weeks."

"But he's _never_ done that for me."

"Have you ever hurt your hand?" she asked.

Alya protested, "That's not the point!"

The teacher came in the classroom, stopping that conversation in an instant.

She didn't think it was going to be brought up again.

That was until it was time for them to walk home. Alya linked their arms together with a determined expression, dragged her along until they came to stop in front of Adrien and Nino in the hallway and declared, "Marinette and I are walking by ourselves today."

Adrien raised his eyebrows at that.

Marinette rebutted, "No, we're not."

"Yeah, yeah, you two can still go on after I'm gone," Alya said with a roll of her eyes. "I want to talk to her, all right? Get away from us."

Nino just laughed. "Sure, babe."

Alya kissed his cheek.

Adrien and Nino ended up walking in front of them, still in eyesight.

Although Alya wasn't tugging her along by their intertwined arms any more, that didn't mean the determined expression had disappeared. If anything, it was more evident than before.

"Do you like him?"

Marinette tried not to laugh, really.

It still slipped out.

Like him?

Marinette wouldn't have been there at all if she didn't like him.

Through her laughter, she managed to breathlessly ask, "What kind of question is _that_?"

"A legitimate one, considering your reaction," Alya responded, not sharing the laughter. "I don't mean like friends, Marinette."

The amusement wasn't there any more.

Instead, there was that uncertain feeling of not being in the loop, of being an outsider and not seeing things the same way others did.

Quietly, she said, "I don't understand why you're asking that."

"I'm not attacking you or whatever," Alya assured her, talking just as softly. Their footsteps were louder than their voices. "I just—I want to make sure that you're... aware of what's going on."

The doubt was clear in her tone. "You think he likes me romantically?"

"I think you should consider that possibility," Alya diplomatically replied.

It wasn't something that would've crossed her mind.

Marinette adored any sort of affection that Adrien gave her, slowly becoming comfortable with the hugs and their intertwined hands, but that—

That had never been an option.

He was someone that she wanted to protect, someone so pure that demons wanted to hold his heart as he took in his last breath.

She wasn't anything compared to him.

"I think," Marinette started quietly, her gaze on Adrien's figure almost out of sight. "I think you should mind your own business."

Alya wasn't offended. "Yeah, that's fair."

They didn't talk much before catching up to the other two, but it wasn't awkward. Marinette wasn't annoyed by Alya's concern; if anything, she thought it was nice that Alya had cared enough about Adrien's feelings to have a talk with her privately.

Even if the idea itself was absurd.

Marinette was still getting the grasp of having friendships—ones that didn't revolve around violence and murdering with a demon—so the suggestion that Adrien could view it any other way was jarring.

It didn't make sense.

The closeness between them when they sat together in his room, the way he gave her a chance to pull away before any embrace happened, and the gradual increase of them holding hands had all seemed natural—nothing about it had screamed romance and wanting more.

It wasn't something she was experienced in.

There wasn't anything suspicious about his behaviour with her during the week. Adrien wasn't rushing to collect her belongings any more since her hand had healed, instead meeting her outside the classroom if they were in different classes to walk to the next together, always keeping her company when Alya and Nino wandered off to buy their lunches.

It was all the same as before.

Alya didn't bring up the topic again.

At the weekend, Marinette was the one to state, "Alya thinks you like me."

Adrien blinked. "I should hope so?"

She grinned. "That's what I said."

"Are you stealing my personality now?" he asked, teasing. "Because that's not fair. I'm already sharing my knowledge with you. I'm scared that I'll go to school one day to see you in a blond wig, impersonating me."

She gestured towards him. "You're taller than I am."

"High heels and baggy trousers might make up for that," he said seriously, somehow not smiling. "It might be a fashion faux pas, but I doubt you care about that much."

Marinette looked down to her black jeans where the rips on the knees had only gotten worse over time. "I'm the queen of fashion."

"You are," he assured her, patting her hand. "You can be anything you want to be."

She scrunched her nose up. "That doesn't sound sincere at all."

"Almost anything," Adrien amended. "Your habit of murdering people might get in the way of a lot of stuff."

"It can't be that bad if you're my friend," she mused.

He winked at her. "Because I'm a great person?"

"I was going to say because you're pure and wholesome," Marinette responded, lips curling into a smile. "But you're already aware of that, aren't you?"

Adrien grinned right back. "If you say I am, I'm not going to argue."

"You would've have anyone trying to murder you if you weren't pure," she muttered. "It's a fact."

"Why is that?" he questioned, tilting his head. "I'm sure I've done some pretty shitty things. Surely, other people are better than me."

"I highly doubt it's some ranking system depending on your choices," she denied. "I'm guessing it's just—decided from birth? Like a roll of a dice. You lost."

He placed a hand over his heart. "You calling me a loser?"

She snorted. "Maybe."

"I'm offended," he lied, straight-faced. "I've changed my mind, I don't like you any more."

She was the one that couldn't stop smiling. "What a loss."

Compared to before, when she'd clammed up and didn't know how to interact with him, it was so much different. Marinette felt at ease with him—different to when she was with Chloé—and knowing that he accepted her decisions was a development that only made her like him more.

She didn't know if it was romantic.

Adrien was who she was living for; the reason she was there after all those years, by his side and protecting him and not caring whether she hurt herself badly if he was okay.

Being his friend was enough.

There was still that wonder in her, though.

Their thighs were touching from how close they were sitting to each other when Marinette said with an air of certainty, "You only like me as a friend."

Adrien didn't look away from her.

He hesitated to answer.

And as he ran a hand through his already unkempt hair, messier it up further, all she could say was a soft, "Oh."

His silence was telling.

It wouldn't have been a shocking revelation to anyone else. Marinette's idea of relationships was skewed; or, rather, her whole view on life was. Often, the situations she saw on television or in films were proven wrong by her actually experiencing them, and she had no doubt that that would apply to romance, too.

He'd told her he wasn't interested in anyone.

Adrien's voice was quiet as he asked, "I'm not making you uncomfortable, am I?"

"No." Marinette frowned. "Why would you?"

He was the one to look confused then. "Because—you do realise I have a crush on you, right?"

"I gathered that," she confirmed. "Why?"

"Why do I have a crush on you?" he questioned, high-pitched and sounding a bit panicked. "Or why—why am I asking you that?"

Marinette decided to clarify for him. "Why would you make me uncomfortable?"

He swallowed. "You don't feel the same way, do you?"

She pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. "I don't think so."

"Right," he whispered, ever-so-quietly. "That's—that's why I didn't say anything. It's not—I'm not trying to force you to do anything, right? If you ever feel uncomfortable with me, I want you to tell me."

"You don't," she assured him without hesitation. "Adrien, you're—you're the person I'm most comfortable with."

His eyes grew wide. "I am?"

"I don't exactly have conversations like this with Chloé," she admitted, reaching up and tucking some stray hairs behind her ears. "With her it's—it's blunt and not very personal, you know? We don't talk about our feelings, not really. But when I'm with you, I'm... I feel vulnerable."

"Marinette—"

"I don't know what I feel for you," she interrupted, earnestly meeting his gaze. "But I'd do anything for you."

"I know," he whispered. "But this—this isn't like that. I'm not asking you to return my feelings if they're not genuine."

The whole situation was curious and foreign.

She felt strangely out of place. "What do you want from me?"

Adrien wetted his lips. "I don't want any more than you want to give me."

The response was all the more confusing.

"How we've been is just fine," he told her, pulling down the sleeve of his shirt over his hand. "I like hanging out with you like this, but if you ever want to—to stop, that's okay, too."

She didn't have to think hard about that. "I don't want to stop."

"Then, don't," he said quietly, a small smile on his lips. "We're—we're friends, right? No one gets to decide what our friendships means but us."

"Us," she repeated, treasuring that word.

"I am so grateful to you," Adrien confessed, hesitating to reach his hand out for only a moment before he gently placed it on top of her knee. "And not just because you've saved me. I'm... I'm so glad that you're back in my life, Marinette."

She pointed out, "You barely remember me."

"Does that matter?" he questioned. "I remember you were nice to me, unlike the kids my grandfather taught. And you've opened my eyes to so many things since you transferred here."

"To murder," she muttered.

"That, too," he agreed with a shaky laugh. "But I've got you to protect me, right?"

"Of course," Marinette confirmed with a frown. "That shouldn't even be a question any more."

He beamed. "That means you'll be by my side, right?"

"If you want me to," she said.

"You'd just be lurking in the background if I said no, wouldn't you?" Adrien questioned, sounding more amused than wary of that thought. "I'd rather be with you."

She swallowed. "I'm not going anywhere."

Adrien lifted his hand up from her knee, forming a fist. "We're in this together, yeah?"

Copying him, she bumped her knuckles gently against his as she said, "Yes."

His smile was sincere.

-x-

Marinette wasn't one to care about what others thought about her. She'd been distant, somewhat rude, and kept to herself for the first year that she'd transferred to the school, and she'd only cared about not attracting too much attention.

The revelation that she cared about what Alya thought about her was startling.

She didn't change her behaviour with Adrien.

Sometimes, he held her hand when they walked home together after Alya and Nino had wandered off, were close enough to have inside jokes that Adrien refused to explain to his friends, and her late night visits to his bedroom were a highlight of her week.

Even if it meant accepting wet wipes to try and get the blood off of her face as they didn't want to risk creeping across the hallway to the bathroom.

She didn't hold his hand during lunch again.

Adrien didn't seem to mind.

Alya still didn't bring it up.

With the knowledge that Adrien liked her, questions popped up in her mind.

She had to wonder whether the portrayal in media was similar at all; whether he got butterflies in his stomach, if his heartbeat got faster when she was around—

Marinette thought about it a lot.

Adrien was always on her mind, so that wasn't a difference.

She had questions, but the only person she could speak to about them was Adrien. Chloé wasn't someone she was going to talk about her feelings to, not when it would only result in teasing and attention she absolutely didn't want, and Alya wouldn't understand the dynamic to their relationship.

And so, that led her to bluntly asking Adrien what she wanted.

To his credit, he took it well.

He'd expressed a want earlier in the week to planning to purchase a present for his mother. Instead of inviting Alya and Nino along with them to shopping centre, it was the two of them walking side-by-side, hands occasionally brushing as he peered in the shop windows, uncertain on whether to enter them.

Marinette wasn't much help with finalising his decision.

It was when they'd stopped into a café to buy two drinks to go that she asked him, "How do you know you like me?"

"That's a random question," he remarked, stabbing his straw through the lid of his drink. "You mean like as in a crush, yeah?"

"Yes," she confirmed, holding her cold drink with two hands.

"Well." He took a drawn out sip of his drink as they passed through the doors of the café. "I like spending time with you."

Marinette frowned. "That's not clearing anything up."

"Your question's the confusing one," he defended. "Look—let's... find somewhere to sit if you're going to interrogate me about my feelings. I'm fragile, you know. I might fall over."

When they sat down, she looked at him expectantly.

Adrien breathed out loudly. "What do you want to know?"

"Do I make you nervous?" she asked.

"No," he denied, cupping his drink with both hands and holding it on his lap. "Not any more. I feel very comfortable with you now. There's something special about being with someone that could kill me any moment."

She blinked.

Adrien shrugged and a small smile. "That was a joke."

She didn't laugh. "Oh."

"What else?" he prompted.

Somehow, she didn't feel ridiculous when she asked, "Does your heart beat faster when you're with me?"

Adrien's surprised reaction did make her smile, though. "What kind of question is that?"

"It's a genuine question," she muttered, eyes dropping down to her drink as she used her straw to mix it. "Why?"

"It's..." Adrien paused, closing his mouth for a moment as he visibly struggled for words. "Marinette, being nervous and jittery aren't requirements for liking you. They could be there, sure, but we've—I know you. You're my friend."

Her brow furrowed. "What do you mean?"

"I'm not nervous because I know I can be myself around you," he explained, voice as soft as his expression. "You've seen me in my worst pyjamas and didn't tease me. I know that you genuinely care about me and wouldn't stop being there for me if we had a fight over something stupid."

It didn't sound like a reason to like her, not when she'd been doing that all along.

And when she expressed that aloud, Adrien winced. "It's not—it's not like that. I don't like you only because of the things you do for me."

"I don't get it," she admitted. "I haven't—nothing has changed for me when it comes to you. You're my friend now, but my feelings are still the same."

"Your feelings aren't exactly the norm," he quipped, knowing she wouldn't be offended. "If we push the sworn bodyguard thing aside for now, I'll try and explain it from my point of view."

She tilted her head curiously. "Okay."

"I want to be there for you," Adrien announced, smiling softly as he looked into her eyes. "If you're troubled, I want to be the one to hear your problems—even if they're not a big deal to you, I'd still listen. I hate the thought of you getting hurt, even more so because you don't think it's anything serious. I'm still holding a grudge that you didn't tell me about last summer immediately, by the way."

Didn't that describe her relationship with him?

When she told him that, he had a thoughtful expression.

"Well," he started, drawing out the vowel. "Will you let me ask you something?"

"Okay," she agreed.

"You like holding my hand, right?" Adrien asked.

She nodded.

With that, he gently took her hand into his, both of their hands cold from their drinks, and gave her a smile that reached his lips. "This is something you want to do, right?"

"Yes," Marinette confirmed.

"Would you want to do this with anyone else?" he questioned, looking down to their linked hand and squeezing gently. "With... Alya?"

"Not really," she replied without hesitation. "I'm—I'm not used to anyone touching me, but it's different when it's you."

"Okay," he whispered, repeating it under his breath once more. "And do you—do you want to do anything else? With me?"

Marinette frowned. "This is more than enough."

"Not my question," Adrien replied with a shake of his head. "Would you _want_ to?"

"I don't know." That seemed to become a staple answer for her now. "I've never done anything else."

"That's fine," he assured her, flexing his fingers before linking them through hers again. "If it helps, I don't want to do this with anyone else."

They were sitting so closely.

She had to remind him, "You were scared of me."

"I was," Adrien confirmed, putting his drink between his thighs dangerously so he could brush his hair out of his face. "But that was before I knew you."

She swallowed. "You were still scared after you found out who I am."

"Marinette," he called, tilting his head and looking at her with a soft smile. "I meant know you properly. It's different when I know more about you than just your name."

Her voice was a whisper as she asked, "What makes it so different?"

"I know your favourite food now," he pointed out, grinning. "I know what you like to do in your free time, what you like to watch, and so much more. There's—there's more to you than just being here for me. I want to see you happy for yourself."

Marinette quietly told him, "I am happy."

"Are you?" he questioned, earnest. "Really, are you?"

"Happier than I've been in a long time," she confirmed softly.

His thumb started to trace faint patterns on her skin. The touch was comforting.

"That's good," he whispered.

There was so much she wanted to say; that he was the reason for her happiness, that the only reason she was smiling was because of him in the first place, or that his presence made her relax and feel normal—

His drink slipped from between his legs, falling to the floor. The contents splattered out, some of it getting on their shoes.

"Oh, no." Adrien looked down at it sadly.

When she held out her own drink for him, his smile seemed almost blinding.

She beamed right back at him.

Being with Adrien was always a delight.

He didn't flinch away from her injuries any more, had gotten used to her blasé way of explaining what had happened with demons when he asked for more details, and it came across that he was becoming desensitised to the whole thing.

"I'm cool with it until I actually _see_ it," Adrien explained one evening with a shrug of his shoulders. "It's different when it's in my head, you know?"

That was an understatement.

They were alone the next time a demon noticed Adrien.

Marinette thought the person looked familiar when she spotted them across the street, standing on the other end of the crossing and waiting for the light to turn green.

Adrien was beside her, chattering about the new game that he'd bought the previous night. He was trying to convince her to buy a better laptop so she could play it with him, although he knew it was falling on deaf ears.

There wasn't a good reason for her to invest in one, so she wasn't going to dive into her stash of money.

She could see it when they caught sight of Adrien. Their eyes widened for a moment before they composed their expression, face smoothing out and surprise no longer showing there.

Adrien looked considerably less terrified when she told him that time.

Standing on her toes and leaning close to whisper in his ear, Marinette said, "We're not going back to your place. It was annoying cleaning it up last time."

"What—what are we doing?" he questioned.

Her response was to hold his hand and direct him through the crowd.

There was no doubt that they were being followed.

Killing a demon near Adrien's home brought problems, and so did being in public. She needed somewhere secluded and private, where it wouldn't be a disaster if she got her sword out.

The last thing she needed was to be arrested.

And so, that's how they walked for close to fifteen minutes until she saw a public toilet. There were two sections, for men and women each, but she ignored that and tugged Adrien into the men's side.

It was as dirty as it looked outside.

Marinette remembered washing her hair in similar places when she was younger. She'd had to struggle to get her hair all wet when she'd cut it short with her blade, and she'd ended up using a cup to help speed the process along.

She hadn't had to do that for years.

Gesturing for Adrien to get into one of the two stalls, she placed a finger to her lips, communicating that he needed to stay quiet.

He wasn't pale, but his terrified eyes darted to the door before he obediently went inside of the stall, closing the door behind him.

She heard the sound of the lock.

Marinette turned on the tap, letting the water run.

The bandalore felt safe in her hands.

When the door to the men's section opened, Marinette reacted in an instant. She flicked her wrist to have the string wrap them up, moving her hand and throwing them into the wall, still restrained.

The handle of her knife was in her hands when she realised that the person she'd thrown wasn't a demon.

At least, they weren't who she was waiting for.

She took a step closer, kneeling down to peer at the blood that was coming from the unconscious man's head, realising that the wound she'd inflicted wasn't healing immediately.

They were human.

With a sigh, she returned the bandalore back to its default state, only checking to see if the man was still breathing before she stood up. There wouldn't be anything for him to remember; it had been too quick, and there wasn't any cameras to prove that anything had happened.

For good measure, she plucked his wallet out of his pocket.

She took the money out before throwing it on his lap.

Adrien hadn't said a word.

It occurred to her that he probably thought that the man was the demon, too.

For a moment, she didn't know whether she was supposed to feel guilty or not. It wasn't as though she'd killed the man, and she was reacting on instinct to protect Adrien.

She wouldn't be sorry for that.

And it was as she'd come to that conclusion that the door opened again.

It was the demon that time.

Marinette reacted just as quickly, restraining them and throwing them against the wall before thrusting her blade through their struggling chest. Threats and pained noises were escaping them, but she was tuning it out, slicing through the flesh and bone to find the second heart before piercing the third, having to go back to the first in that small amount of time to eliminate them all.

Blood had splattered onto the toilet stall.

With her bloodied blade still in her hand, Marinette walked to the stall's door, knocking twice with her knuckles as she murmured, "It's me."

His voice was hushed as he asked, "Is it—is it okay to come out?"

"Yeah, it's just us," she answered before remembering the slumped over man in the corner.

If she was lucky, Adrien wouldn't look that way.

The tap was still running, so she washed her blade quickly with her hands as the door behind her squeaked from Adrien shuffling out.

He gasped. "I thought—I thought you said it's just us?"

There was no hiding the body, then.

She lifted up her shirt to put her blade away before zipping up her jacket to hide the blood that had gotten onto her. The weather was warmer, but she'd make it home before becoming too sweaty from being covered.

"Ignore him," Marinette instructed. "We should get out of here before he wakes up."

"_Wakes_ up?" he questioned, aghast. "Isn't he—"

She took his hand and pulled him out, avoiding that topic.

Adrien wasn't happy with her.

Marinette was too stubborn to apologise.

She didn't do anything wrong.

He was under a different impression, though.

"Did you really think I haven't hurt anyone before?" Marinette asked, a day later when she was in his bedroom while his parents were asleep.

"I—" Adrien cut himself off to clear his throat as he fiddled with his hands in his lap. "I guess I wanted to believe that. It was just—it was a shock to me, to actually see it."

That was the case with everything he'd seen.

"It was wrong time and place for them," she explained, attempting to comfort him by talking plainly. "I didn't kill them, it's fine. The dude probably woke up and figured out that he got mugged."

"Hang on, _mugged_?"

Apparently, stealing his money was even worse.

Marinette didn't get it. "I steal money all of the time."

"Not after you've accidentally knocked someone out!" he defended, running a frustrated hand through his hair. "Two wrongs don't make a right, you know? And that's exactly what you did."

"I don't understand," she said, frowning. "You're fine with me stealing, but not if I've hurt them?"

The best way to describe his expression was horrified. "You don't normally beat someone up for their money, do you?"

"No," she denied. "I don't have to."

"Have to—" Adrien breathed out noisily. "Did you have to? Before?"

"I was a tiny kid before," she replied, amused. "Do you think I could've beaten anyone up?"

He leaned back, pulling his legs up onto the sofa and hugging his knees to his chest. "I don't know."

It was clearly a conflict between them, one that had been avoided until then.

Killing demons had been a hard topic to talk about in the beginning, too.

She wasn't going to back down from her decisions.

"I'm sorry you had to see that," Marinette said, meeting his gaze. "But I'm not going to apologise for what I have to do to protect you."

He swallowed. "Do you not feel bad?"

She didn't hesitate. "I don't."

"Oh," he whispered, breaking eye contact as he stared down at his sock-clad feet. "Okay."

And that was that.

There was no preaching that she needed to care about others, that she was being callous in her disregard for other people—

Instead, Adrien held her hand and asked her whether there was anything specific that she wanted to watch.

Her chest felt warm.

He wasn't telling her that she was wrong, and that meant more than she could put into words.

She liked being close to him, adored how his dimples showed when he smiled, and the sound of his laugh always filled her with happiness. There was something special about being able to have one-on-one time with him in the comfort of his room, a safe place where she could come in bloodied clothes and wouldn't be turned away.

One of her favourite things was when he deliberated on what colour plaster to give her, even though the cut would be gone in the morning.

"It's the thought that counts," he'd say to defend himself.

He was the one that counted.

-x-

When it rained while they were walking home from school, Adrien had gotten out his umbrella for the two of them to share. It meant they were shoulder-to-shoulder—or as close they could be with their height difference—and he was the one to hold the handle between them, holding it high enough to cover them.

When she turned her head to look at him, she was able to see that his shoulder was wet, the darkened material of his t-shirt standing out against the rest of the fabric, a direct contrast how to dry she was in comparison.

He was angling the umbrella over her more.

There was that warm feeling again, a smile that she didn't want to try and restrain, and when he caught her looking, grinning right back before prattling on about his new obsession that he was trying to get her to look into it, there was no denying the fondness she felt for him.

Being with Chloé didn't come anywhere close to it.

When they turned onto his street, Adrien paused. "You're going home now, right?"

She held the straps of her backpack. "Yes."

"Take this, then," he offered, already thrusting the umbrella out to her. "You'll need it more than me."

"But it's—"

Adrien wasn't taking no for an answer.

He took a step back into the rain, holding the umbrella out at his arm's length. "I want you to have it."

Their hands brushed when she took ahold of it.

"See you tomorrow," he said, smile reaching his eyes.

She wetted her lips. "Bye."

Adrien ran down the street, droplets of rain falling on him as he went up his driveway, and she stayed there until he'd stumbled through his front door, trying to take his shoes off before he was inside.

She was still smiling as she walked away.

That wasn't a normal feeling, was it?

It wasn't anything bad; rather, Marinette felt impossibly happier with him every time. When she thought she'd hit the limit of how much joy she could feel, it was surpassed, leaving her with cheeks that hurt from smiling too much.

It was unlike the previous months they'd spent together, back when they'd tentatively started a friendship.

From the hushed visits in his bedroom, the way he looked at her with such a soft expression that she was sure she was reciprocating, to the breathy laughter that escaped him when he laughed at her unexpected jokes that made him almost sound like he was wheezing at times—they were things that hadn't really been there before, but she wouldn't trade them for the world.

And so, it was in his bedroom that she admitted, "I think I like you."

Adrien's surprise was clear on his face. "Pardon?"

She repeated herself.

He didn't look any less surprised.

After clearing his throat, he softly pointed out, "You weren't sure before."

That was almost two months ago.

She'd realised a few things since then.

"I thought about it more," she started, fiddling with the knitted blanket that she had draped over her lap. "About whether I'd do the things I do with you with anyone else."

"You already said you don't want to," Adrien replied, putting his feet on the sofa, his knees close to touching his chest. "That hasn't changed, has it?"

For all the times she'd gone to Alya's and spent time alone with her, there hadn't been a moment where Marinette had wanted to hold her hand. Alya awkward hugged her good-bye at times, but it was never anything more than that.

But she'd seen the way that Alya and Nino leaned into each other to whisper, the soft look in their eyes before they shared a kiss on the lips, and how Nino had once pushed her hair aside to kiss her forehead when they were shopping once.

Those weren't things that were shared with friends.

And Chloé—

Chloé was a different type of friend.

"No," she confirmed. "It hasn't."

He nodded, stretching out his arms to rest them on top of his knees, looking the perfect example of relaxation.

"I like your smile," Marinette proclaimed, going straight for honesty. "And your laugh."

Adrien made an amused noise. "Do you now?"

"I do," she confirmed, feeling her face grow warm from being so direct. Her heart wasn't beating madly in her chest, her hands weren't clammy, and she felt more certain of what she was saying with every word. "I like how you worry when I scratch myself, too."

He huffed. "I _don't_ like you hurting yourself."

"I know," she whispered, smile curling on her lips. "That's another reason I like you—you care."

"Others care about you, too."

"Not as much as you," she confessed, earnestly looking into his eyes. "No one's ever cared as much as you."

She could see it as he swallowed. "Marinette—"

"I like you," she reiterated, interrupting any protests he was about to make. "I don't know what I'm doing, but I'd like to."

He cleared his throat. "You're not asking me for pointers, are you?"

"Maybe." She grinned. "Are you willing to give me some?"

"You don't have to change anything," Adrien told her, taking one of her hands into his own in a familiar move, linking their fingers together. "We're the ones that get to decide what our relationship is like, remember?"

Curious, she replied, "You said friendship before."

He grinned, dimples showing on his cheeks. "If you like me back, that means you're open to dating me, right?"

Adrien had always been inaccessible in her mind, even more so when she'd moved into the city to protect him. He'd been there in the distance, unaware that she was there in the same classroom as her, but that had all changed.

Her face still felt hot.

"Oh," she breathed. "I—yes?"

It came out sounding like a question.

"No pressure," he reassured her, thumb tracing patterns in her skin. "This is between us, yeah? It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. If you're not ready for that, that's fine."

It had never seemed like an option before.

"Nothing would change?" she questioned.

"No," he confirmed with a small smile. "Nothing has to."

Marinette asked, "So we're not going to kiss?"

Startled, he spluttered, "I—what?"

And despite the red that had appeared on his face, he didn't let go of her hand.

She might've been teasing him a bit.

"That's what people do when they're dating, right?" Marinette replied, a laugh coming out at the end. "That's something we haven't done yet."

His voice cracked. "You want to kiss me?"

That didn't need much thought put into it, did it?

"I think so," she murmured. "Don't you?"

He ran his free hand through his hair. "Only if you do."

"Why is this being left up to me?" she asked, wriggling her fingers between his. "This seems like a joint effort, don't you think?"

And as his smile reached his eyes, Adrien quietly pointed out, "I'm waiting for you, remember? I'm not going to do anything you're not ready for."

Marinette took a moment to reply, "How do I know I'm ready if we don't try?"

He cleared his throat. "I'm really starting to think you do actually want to kiss me."

"Perhaps," she said, trying not to laugh.

"Come back to me when you're sure, then," he teased, giving her hand a gentle squeeze. "Does this mean you're my girlfriend?"

She smiled widely. "Do you want me to be?"

"You can't steal my words!" Adrien protested, jutting out his lower lip dramatically. "That's just rude."

"Sharing is caring, isn't it?" Marinette quipped.

He snorted. "Coming from _you_?"

"I share," she defended.

He stared.

With a sigh, she gave in and said, "Okay, maybe I don't."

"You don't have to share me," he proclaimed with a grin.

She made an offended noise. "You're the one that threw a fit when we were younger because I befriended someone else!"

He hummed. "Sounds fake."

"It's _true_!"

"You and I are the only ones that remember that summer," he mused, raising his eyebrows. "And it seems we remember it quite differently."

She scoffed. "You barely remember it at all, you ass."

He laughed. "Shouldn't it be the same with you?"

It seemed like a fleeting memory in the back of her mind; she couldn't remember how Aloys looked without the photograph, couldn't recall the routines she'd learned with the practice sword, but she had faint memories of Adrien tugging her by the hand around the house, excitedly sharing his toys and introducing her to everything new.

She remembered Aloys' body.

"A bit," she admitted, averting her eyes to look down at their joined hands. "But I hope I don't forget it all some day."

Adrien leaned closer, gently nudging her with an elbow If they weren't holding hands, he probably would've pulled her into a loose one-armed embrace. "You can't forget me when I'm here with you."

"Promise you're not going anywhere?"

He held out his little finger. "Pinky promise?"

With a fond laugh, she hooked her finger around his.

-x-

The nightclub wasn't as full as it was before.

The bouncer hadn't looked at her suspiciously once her identification card was passed to him—straight out of Chloé's wallet, not _hers—_and they'd been allowed inside.

It was warm, stuffy, and the loud music made it hard to hear Chloé when she was gesturing towards the bar.

Instead of joining her, Marinette opted to stay near a wall, away from as many people as she could. It was too soon to start swiping wallets when Chloé was preoccupied.

The drunks were all ruled out for being demons.

It wasn't a front, she knew that. Chloé had said that the management were demons, at least one bouncer and bartender were always ones of her kind to offer other demons discounts to lure them in.

So, it wasn't a place to slaughter humans and get away with it.

That would cause too much attention to be turned towards them, of course; rather, it was a lazy living they could last for years, and probably pass down to their fake children who were actually just de-aged versions of themselves.

Rather than embezzling money and running away in the future, the nightclub seemed like an honest living for them. The only downside was that it was too blatant to other demons, surely painting a target on them at times.

Marinette was sure she looked even younger than before; unlike the first time, she wasn't dressed up and wearing an over-the-top themed outfit.

However, it was late in the evening and most of the patrons were some form of intoxicated. No one was glancing at her curiously, no one tried to approach her to talk, and she was leaning against the wall, crossing her arms as she looked around the room.

There was a pounding in her head.

She knew it wasn't because of the music.

It was similar to a headache, but not. It wasn't dominating and making it so she couldn't focus on anything else; rather, it was a subtle feeling that she wouldn't have noticed if she didn't have time alone.

While it wasn't painful, it was strange. She turned her head sharply to see whether movement would irritate it, but nothing changed.

She hadn't had anything to drink, so it wasn't that someone had slipped something in it when she wasn't looking. And she felt relatively healthy that evening.

Rather than ordering grease-filled food, they'd opted for something healthier.

Marinette had gradually gained weight, but she thought it still wasn't enough. Her collarbones still stood out, she could make out the outlines of her ribs when she lifted up her shirt, and although her face didn't look as gaunt as it did before, she'd like to have some more fat there.

Alya had cheeks that stuck out when she smiled.

They looked nice.

She got her phone out to text Adrien while waiting, telling him that she was at the demon nightclub again.

He asked why she hadn't told him earlier.

Well, it wasn't like it was planned. When Chloé had said that there was somewhere that they needed to go, she didn't expect to be dragged along for her to enquire about a blacksmith. It had been weeks since that conversation, and she'd thought that Chloé might've forgotten about it.

The sword didn't seem that important.

For her not to have heard of it, or even _seen _one, in all the time that she'd been with her, and from all the demons that she'd come across—

Why would it matter if she didn't have one?

Chloé had never seen an angel herself, and yet, she wanted to have a weapon prepared.

It didn't make sense to her, but then again, not a lot of things to do with demons did.

The pounding was a gentle throb, a constant hum in her head that didn't drown out the music in the club, and she was frowning down at her phone as she replied to Adrien's message, irritated by the feeling.

When she told him her head felt fuzzy, he asked whether she'd hit it.

His concern was appreciated.

Then, Adrien reminded her that he was allowed to care.

She said he shouldn't so much.

He simply replied that he was her boyfriend.

She didn't try and hold back her smile as she read that.

As he'd said, nothing had to change between them. They were as affectionate with each other as before; holding hands on the walk home, the private meetings in his room, and smiling when they caught each other's eyes in the classroom.

They hadn't told Alya or Nino.

Marinette didn't want it to be a big deal, and Adrien had said that they didn't need it to be one. If their friends asked again, he was prepared to say yes, but he wasn't going to make her uncomfortable by making an announcement.

There was so much about him that she liked, and his compassion was one of those features. He cared about her feelings, wanted to make her feel comfortable, and she could only hope that she could do the same for him.

When Chloé came back towards her, she was smiling widely.

"Good news?" Marinette asked loudly, trying to be heard over the music.

"Oh, yes," Chloé agreed, smoothing out her tight dress. "Let's get you somewhere more age-appropriate, shall we? If someone calls the police on you, I'll stab them."

She blinked. "We're not staying?"

"I spent all my money," was the reply to that.

Marinette stared. "You brought a lot."

"I had bribing to do," Chloé replied, gesturing with her head towards the entrance. "Let's go."

And so, they did.

They went back to Chloé's instead of finding another demon or swiping wallets from drunk humans. The blacksmith information was enough to appease Chloé for the night, apparently.

The dull throb was still there.

It didn't _hurt_, but once she'd noticed it, it was constantly there, like a buzzing in the back of her head.

It definitely wasn't in her ears.

Marinette took some painkillers from her stash in her bedroom, rubbing her forehead with a frown.

It was still there in the morning.

She laid in bed, staring up at the ceiling as that quiet noise, sounding so similar to her pulse, continued to sound in her head. It was barely-there, but when she'd closed her eyes to fall asleep, it was all that she could focus on.

When she left to go to Alya's before noon, it was there irregularly, disappearing for a few minutes on her walk before coming back. She was running her hand through her hair, trying to locate the exact point where the feeling was coming through, but it was useless by the time she'd made it to Alya's home.

It had stopped.

For the whole duration she was there—for a film where Alya was trying to convince her to paint her nails something _other_ than black for once—it was gone.

Then, when she was outside and on her way back, it was there.

She took more painkillers.

It didn't go.

Frustration was the best way to describe how she felt.

As soon as she'd noticed it, it wouldn't _go_. She had peace for a few hours, yes, but then it was back with a vengeance, driving her mad from the barely-there buzzing in the back of her head, easily drowned out by music.

So, that's what she did.

Rather than the painkillers, Marinette was using her headphones more often than not. It was like when she'd barely be without them in the beginning, before Alya had befriended her, and whenever she was outside, she had them either on her head or around her neck.

"Can you hear it now?" Adrien asked, putting his hands over her ears, as if trying to muffle the sound.

"Not here," she told him, leaning into his touch.

He cupped her cheek instead, the other hand falling down to his side. "Are you trying to say that this is your safe space?"

"Well, the school is as well," she pointed out. "And Alya's. They've caused it to stop so far."

"You're going to make me feel jealous," he teased. "You're supposed to say I'm the one for you, not anyone else."

She snorted. "We were talking about places."

"You like school more than me," Adrien said with a sigh, dramatically falling back against the sofa and putting the back of his hand to his forehead. "How will I survive this?"

"You're my favourite everything," Marinette assured him, patting his leg. "I should be the one jealous for you. You're very likeable."

His smile reached his eyes. "I'm likeable, am I?"

"Don't pretend you don't already know that," she scolded, pointing an accusing finger his way.

He laughed. "It's different when you say it."

She tilted her head quizzically. "Why?"

"I like your voice," he said matter-of-factly.

Her face felt hot. "You do?"

"I like everything about you," he reminded her, sitting upright. "You haven't forgotten that already, have you?"

"I have so many things to remember," Marinette replied, tucking her hair behind her ear. "Am I supposed to remember everything you say to me? That's a lot."

Adrien made a noise of disapproval. "So you won't remember me flirting, but you'll remember me throwing a fit that you tried to be friends with someone else when we were younger?"

With a laugh, she asked, "Didn't you say that was a lie?"

"It is," he said, not missing a beat. "A lie that you're clinging to."

"You want me clinging to you, right?" she teased, shifting closer to him to lean against his shoulder.

His expression was as soft as his voice. "I suppose it's not so bad."

"You _suppose_?"

"It's pretty nice," Adrien corrected, grinning. "I'm quite fond of it, actually. You should cling to me more often."

"I'm not going to latch onto your arm," she told him.

He sighed. "How sad..."

"It just seems really uncomfortable," Marinette said, sitting up as she defended her point of view. "It's like when Alya links her arm with mine, right? That's a little annoying after a while."

"I see how it is," Adrien said, sadly shaking his head. "You'll do it with Alya, but not me—"

Her response to that was to shove him.

He was pushed back against the arm of the sofa, laughing a bit too loudly. Adrien quickly put a hand over his mouth, eyes darting towards the door as the two of them stayed quiet, trying to listen to see whether one of his parents had woken up from the noise.

All the months she'd been visiting, one parent had woken up once and gone to the bathroom. They hadn't checked in on Adrien at all.

"Loud," Marinette accused.

He smiled, pushing his hair away from his face. "I can't help that you make me laugh."

"I'll push you on the floor next," she threatened, no heat to her words.

"That'll make more noise," he replied, tapping his chin with his finger thoughtfully. "The only solution is for you to stay quiet, not me."

She snorted. "_Me_?"

"Without you, I wouldn't be making that much noise," Adrien explained, nodding his head along in agreement to his own argument. "It would only be Plagg trying to get my attention. Therefore, this is all your fault."

"I'm here because you invited me," she pointed out.

Adrien hummed. "Did I?"

Marinette huffed, crossing her arms. "Do you think I'd just break into your bedroom?"

"Well, you do it to other people, right?" Adrien replied, his voice so casual that it was as though they were talking about the weather rather than showing any negative reaction to what he really meant. "Why would I be any different?"

She clicked her tongue. "Maybe because I'm _not_ stabbing you."

"Yeah, please don't do that," he said with a laugh. "I'd like to not be impaled, thank you."

"I never came in here before," Marinette told him, meeting his gaze. "You know that right?"

His expression softened. "I never thought you did."

"Good," she murmured. "That—it's not something I needed to do. I _wouldn't_."

"I believe you," Adrien assured her, placing a hand gently on her thigh. "Really, it never crossed my mind. I mean, stalking me with an app is different to coming in here to steal my socks or something."

She wrinkled her nose. "I don't want your socks."

"Yes, you do," he denied. "They're awesome."

"They're impractical," she shot back.

The corner of his eyes crinkled from his smile. "You just hate my toe socks."

"I think everyone but you hates them," Marinette muttered.

Adrien sniffed. "So judgemental."

"Or I have taste and you don't."

He laughed. "That's bold for someone that always wears oversized clothes."

She narrowed her eyes at him. "Do you have a problem with my clothes?"

"Yes, they're as practical as everything else you do," he replied, gesturing towards where her shoes were placed on the windowsill, waiting for her to put them back on when she left. "Your shoes are your biggest fashion statement."

There was no denying that. "They are the most expensive, yes."

"Cute," Adrien said, smile reaching his eyes. "Are your pyjamas plain, too?"

Marinette shook her head. "I'm not telling you."

"So mean," he complained, dramatically placing his head on her shoulder, almost draped across her. "You're keeping secrets."

"That's a top secret topic," she teased.

"Absolutely awful," he continued to complain, pulling her into a half-hearted hug. "Why would you do this to me?"

She could feel his breath against her neck.

"Why wouldn't I?" Marinette replied, shifting to get comfortable in his embrace.

He lifted his head up to look at her with his lower lip jutted out.

It was just so _dramatic_.

And as she looked at him in fondness, she realised that she wouldn't want to have it any other way. Adrien was over-the-top at times, was dramatic with his movements and reactions when he was feeling playful—

And when it was directed at her, she felt like she could melt.

She was the one to say, "You're cute."

His smile brightened his face in an instant. "Am I?"

With a noise of agreement, she remarked, "You are, yes."

"You are, too," he said in a whisper.

"We're talking about you, not me," Marinette denied, though that didn't get rid of her smile.

"About me?" Adrien made a thoughtful noise, their noses almost bumping together from the lack of distance between them. "It's my thoughts, therefore it's about me, right?"

She laughed. "That's not how this works."

"You don't get to make the rules," he denied, his gaze dropping to her mouth before he looked into her eyes again. "If I think you're cute, I'm going to tell you."

"Are you now?" she murmured.

"Yeah," he softly replied, leaning forward so their noses gently touched, meeting her gaze and giving her every chance to move away. "I am."

She didn't.

Their lips met, the pressure barely-there, and Marinette closed her eyes from the contact. The kiss was soft, the feel of his breath against her skin present, and there was a hesitance there that he shared with her.

It wasn't passionate, wasn't filled with those desperate feelings that she always saw on the shows they watched together; rather, it was patient, curious, and kind, and she could feel his smile as they gently moved their lips.

She wasn't uncomfortable.

As he was the one to start, he was also the one to pull back, softness returning to his expression as he met her gaze, not saying anything aloud.

She didn't need to say anything.

Instead, Marinette leaned forward again, gently pressing her lips to his, picking up where they'd left off. It wasn't as hesitant as before, but it was still slow and gentle, even more so with his arms loosely wrapped around her waist, a half-hearted embrace that made her chest feel warm from their close distance.

If she'd known what kissing was like sooner, they would've been doing it already.

She reached out, putting her hand on his forearm to steady herself, tilting her head up to make the angle less awkward for the two of them. While the kiss was a little awkward, showcasing how foreign it was to them both, she didn't feel embarrassed from their teeth accidentally clashed.

Marinette laughed against him, and he did the same, continuing to kiss her with the smile still on his lips, breathy laughter joining their mingled breaths.

She couldn't quite describe how she felt, but she knew she was happy.

And when she pulled back, able to see his reddened lips and the colour that had appeared on to his cheeks, she was sure that she looked the same.

"You're cute," he murmured.

She smiled widely. "I guess it's not too bad to have you tell me that."

-x-

The curious feeling in her head was still there after a week.

Marinette was no closer to figuring out why it came and went, always staying as that background throb, not quite painful, but _there_ enough to be noticeable. The music almost completely drowned it out, but it couldn't be completely ignored.

It was a relief when it disappeared.

Chloé's elegant explanation for it was, "I don't know, you're fucking weird already. Are you really that surprised?"

Marinette had raised her middle finger at that.

They didn't have to go back to the nightclub, thankfully. Chloé had gotten the information she needed, and two weeks later, she dragged Marinette along to a meeting with another demon.

Instead of having her attract too much attention by being right by Chloé's side, Marinette lurked in the background, texting Adrien and trying to look like a child that shouldn't have been out so late at night.

There wasn't a confrontation.

Chloé got told to come back a week later with enough money in cash to pay for the transaction.

It made sense—using the bank would've gotten them attention, wouldn't it?

Marinette was considering getting a bank account.

She hadn't come to a conclusion yet.

When it came time for the meeting, she told Adrien about it beforehand. He was all for her coming to his afterwards, no matter what time it ended, but she wasn't sure whether that was going to happen or not. Chloé might've wanted to celebrate—because she _wanted_ that demon weapon—even though the idea of it was still confusing to her.

Adrien was just as bewildered when she told him.

"You'll be safe, right?" he murmured, gently cupping her face with one hand, leaning closer and staring straight into her eyes. "You're not going to do something stupid like sabotage the deal and kill everyone there, are you?"

It was a little tempting.

But it would've only pissed Chloé off.

Blacksmiths were a rarity, that was all she knew.

"I'm not that stupid," she muttered, leaning into his hand.

He hummed. "Are you sure?"

"Very," Marinette confirmed, looking at him with narrowed eyes. "You're the stupid one here."

"Stupid for you, maybe," he whispered, and that sentence was finished with him pressing his lips to hers.

There was a lot of kissing since the first time.

True to her word, she didn't sabotage the deal. Marinette wasn't present, instead waiting in a twenty-four-hour diner for Chloé to appear.

It took almost an hour.

Chloé's expression was unreadable when she walked through the door, heels clicking against the floor as she crossed the room, sitting down on the cushioned seat and crossing one leg on top of the other.

"Well?" she demanded.

Stoic, Chloé lifted her fist up before showing her thumb.

Marinette clapped. "That's good, right?"

"Real good," Chloé agreed, taking off her jacket, revealing far too much skin to be seated across from a teenager when she looked to be in her early twenties. "There's enough material to make one for me by fall. It cost extra, but that's fine. You can pay for some of it."

There was a lot to take in from that sentence. "_Me_?"

"Oh, look at that," Chloé stated, tapping her phone screen to illuminate it. "Your rent's gone up. It's doubled, actually."

She snorted. "Yeah, fine. I can do that."

"Tripled."

"Two and a half," Marinette bartered.

Chloé grinned, showing her teeth. "Perfect."

Although they'd ordered food for dinner earlier that evening, they got desserts when the waiter came to see what they'd like. After their drinks were delivered, Marinette got out her phone to tell Adrien that she wouldn't be able to come as she was eating out with Chloé.

He replied asking if murder was on the menu.

"What's got you looking so stupid?" Chloé questioned.

She hadn't realised she was smiling.

Marinette reached up to touch her cheek. "Nothing."

Chloé's expression was dubious.

Adrien and Chloé were two parts of her life that would never cross, not when Chloé would murder him in an instant for the power he represented.

Chloé had saved her life, but she wouldn't understand what Adrien meant to her.

Marinette wasn't going to take that risk.

So, she wasn't going to say anything about him, let alone that he was her boyfriend. She kept the details of her life at school a secret, a distant part of her that wasn't supposed to be there when she was together with Chloé, and she was going to keep it that way.

It was bad enough that she'd seen Alya before.

She wasn't going to ask if Chloé remembered that.

That ever-present thrum was still in her head, prominent in the silence due to the lack of customers as they ate their food, and at one point, Marinette got so frustrated she whacked her head with her palm, trying to get it to stop.

Chloé laughed. "You all right there, weirdo?"

"This is getting on my fucking _nerves_," she muttered, closing her eyes before pressing her palms into them, as though it would get it to stop. "I'm going insane."

It didn't stop.

"Take some drugs and get over it."

"I've tried that!" Marinette snapped. "It just—it doesn't fucking work. It's almost always been here for weeks, and I barely get to be without it. And before you even say, I haven't been able to find any illness that sounds right for it."

"Go see a human doctor, then," Chloé suggested.

She scrunched her nose up at that. "No."

She hadn't gone to one before, and she wasn't going to start any time soon. The medical records she had were completely fake.

It was just something she had to deal with.

And so, she did.

Marinette tried not to focus on it, giving the other parts of her life attention instead. She continued to kiss Adrien when they were alone, to hold his hand when they walked home from school—usually with him enthusiastically swinging their arms between them—and have him patch up her injuries from her outings that were either alone or with Chloé.

When she broke two of her toes and ripped off a nail, she learned that while the bones and cuts would heal over, the nail didn't grow back immediately.

That was strange.

"You think it'll be the same for teeth?" Marinette asked.

Adrien looked aghast. "Why are you even thinking about that?"

"I'm curious," she said, putting a finger in her mouth to touch her teeth. "So I can _not_ die, but I could have no teeth. That's great."

"You could always get fake teeth," he suggested. "That's a thing."

She laughed. "Thank you for your support."

"Anything for you, Marinette," he replied, dimples showing from his smile.

There wasn't anything going wrong.

Adrien informed her which schools he'd applied to, which specific courses, and she swiftly did the same thing. The only restriction they had was that she was awful at art and definitely wouldn't have the same exam results as him, but he was quick to remind her that he wasn't planning to pursue anything like that.

He wasn't opposed to her following him.

"It's inevitable, isn't it?" he joked. "I'm pretty sure you'd drop out and stalk me from a distance if I said no."

She narrowed her eyes at him. "I'm not that creepy."

"You're not that creepy any more," he corrected, patting her head. "That's character development."

She kissed him to get him to stop talking.

They started going on dates.

It wasn't any different to the other times they'd gone outside together. There wasn't a big change there, and Marinette didn't feel pressured to try and change her behaviour around him.

Adrien treated her almost the same.

He just kissed her more, that was all.

She wasn't going to complain about that.

And when she caught him looking at her with a soft expression when they were in a classroom, or when they were seated beside each other at a lunch table, she'd smile back at him or gently nudge his foot underneath the table.

His smile grew whenever she did that.

The next time they went to the cinema, it was just the two of them. Adrien was excited for a fantasy film that had recently come out, and he didn't need to do much to convince her to come.

Him suggesting that they could share different drinks and food was more than enough to get her to agree.

To her surprise, when he told his parents their plans, his mother insisted on driving the two of them. It turned out that Adrien had told them all about her strict grandfather, keeping up the charade that that was who she lived with, and since they walked home every day together, his parents were definitely under the illusion that she lived nearby.

And so, she had to ring the bell on his porch, hands gripping the straps of her backpack from what could've been classed as nerves.

Adrien's mother was as friendly as the other times she'd met her.

The car ride was a little awkward with Marinette sitting in the back while Adrien and his mother were at the front, prattling away. Adrien's mother kept turning around in her seat to address her, teasing her son in the process, and by the time they were dropped off at the cinema, Adrien's ears were red.

"She's so embarrassing," he muttered, running a hand through his hair.

"I think she thinks this is a date," Marinette mused.

He sulkily crossed his arms. "It is, but she doesn't need to know that."

"Who's the dirty secret now?" she teased.

"You," Adrien shot back. "I know there's blood under your nails."

She looked down to her chipped nail varnish. "I showered last night."

"That's why your hair smells so nice," he remarked, pulling her into a hug. Their height difference made it so he could put his nose to her hair, taking an obnoxious sniff to emphasise his words. "So, so nice."

Marinette didn't push him away. "Aren't we supposed to be going inside?"

The weird feeling in her head had been there since the car had parked to let them out. Marinette didn't pay it much mind, ignored it when Adrien was ushering her inside and listing off the different candies that they could buy, deciding that they'd split two between them.

It was when she saw an employee looking at Adrien that she remembered Chloé's words.

A demon worked here, didn't they?

One posing as a teenager, one that would surely have unblemished skin, though beauty might not have been in the cards for them.

She reached out, tugging on the sleeve of Adrien's shirt to get him to stop before they joined the queue to buy their tickets and food.

He looked at her with a curious expression, not leaning away when he moved closer, standing on her toes to whisper in his ear, "Can we wait until there's not a queue? I need to do something."

Adrien just shrugged. "Sure, I guess."

They sat on a seat near the entrance, knees almost touching from their close distance. With a glance at the counter, she determined it was far enough for the employee not to hear them.

Demons didn't have enhanced hearing.

Adrien didn't look horrified when she told him what was going on, but he wasn't subtle about his glances towards the employee.

It helped in her favour, though.

The line cleared out.

Adrien told her that the advertisements and trailers would run for some time before the actual film started, so they had time to kill for her to carry out her plan.

It was simple, really.

She wouldn't let anything happen to him.

So, when she walked up to the counter alone, leaving Adrien behind still sat on the bench, she walked up to the employee that had been looking at him. From close distance, Marinette could see that his skin had no acne, that his hair was in healthy conditioner, and he was by far the most put together employee that was there.

He looked to be a few years older than her, as Chloé had said.

"Hi," Marinette started, wetting her lips. "I'm—this might sound strange, but I'd like to ask if you'd maybe be interested in going on a date with my friend over there? He's too shy to come over and talk to you."

And as she gestured towards Adrien with a nod of her head, the employee peered to see who she was talking about.

It helped that Adrien's eyes widened before he looked down at his phone, looking entirely suspicious.

She was sure that his heart was racing, and not for a positive reason.

The employee's face looked far too happy at her words.

"Really?" he asked.

"What time do you finish?" Marinette bluntly asked.

The employee told her that his shift ended close to half an hour after the predicted time their film ended, so she arranged for Adrien to meet him outside.

It seemed too easy.

The demon had to be too preoccupied with thinking of how lucky they were, surely—for someone pure to be interested in _them_?

It had to get rid of any worry of how they'd have to approach him.

Marinette wasn't significant.

Adrien jumped up to his feet when she walked back over to him, worry clear on his expression, and she gestured for them to go down the hallway to get to the right room.

"It worked," was all she said as they walked.

Before they went through the doors to the theatre, to where the film was surely about to begin, he reached out and took ahold of her wrist gently, pulling her to a stop.

"Marinette," he whispered. "Are you sure about this?"

There wasn't much of a choice, was there?

"I'm sorry for involving you," she said, wrapping her arms around him in a loose hug, her cheek against his chest.

"It was my decision," Adrien reminded her. "I agreed. I said I'd help."

That didn't mean she was okay with involving him so much. It was bad enough when he attracted attention when they were at the shopping centre—it wasn't supposed to be somewhere else that used to be considered a safe place, somewhere he'd gone with his friends before.

She looked up, meeting his gaze as she promised, "I'm not going to let anything happen to you."

"I don't doubt that." Adrien's smile was soft as he cupped her face, leaning down until their noses were touching. "I trust you, remember?"

That meant more than she could express.

"Come on," he murmured, brushing her hair aside to press a kiss to her forehead before he pulled away. "We have a film to get to, yeah?"

It wasn't until they were sat down that she realised she'd forgotten to buy food or drinks.

She wasn't going to let Adrien go out there alone to buy them, and when she offered to do it, he leaned over to say, "Stay."

So, they didn't have anything.

He held her hand almost the whole time.

Adrien was jittery, nervously adjusting their linked fingers and shifting in his seat.

It was understandable.

Moving closer to him, she quietly repeated into his ear, "Nothing's going to happen to you."

He squeezed her hand in return.

She couldn't fully pay attention to the film.

If she killed the demon, they'd regenerate the next day, come back into existence and perhaps go back to their human family to continue playing their role after explaining why they'd disappeared for so long.

It was the only option, though. She couldn't tie them up and leave them when only her bandalore could withhold their strength.

Adrien's hand was clammy when the credits started to appear.

"I'm staying right here with you," she assured him, not getting up from their seats as others started to leave. "We've got half an hour, maybe, until the guy comes to meet us."

He inhaled sharply. "What excuse are you going to use?"

"That I don't want to leave you alone until I get his personal details, of course." Her smile was all teeth. "I can't trust my best friend with a strange man until I know something incriminating about him, right?"

"Best friend," Adrien muttered, shaking his head in disbelief. "You think—you really think this is going to work?"

"Oh, definitely," she murmured. "There's no way he'll pass up alone time with you when _you're_ the one approaching him."

He narrowed his eyes. "You did, not me."

"I'm playing matchmaker," she declared.

"I'm going to have a heart attack," Adrien proclaimed, running a hand through his already messy hair. "I am going to die. I'm supposed to be on a date with you, but my parents are going to find my body in some dirty alley—"

"No, you're not," Marinette denied, putting a hand on his cheek and turning his head so he was meeting her gaze. "You're going to be perfectly fine. We're going to take a bus back near your house, and when your parents ask, you'll say my grandfather was quiet, but he wasn't mean to you."

He blinked. "I am?"

"Yes," she said, smile curling on her lips. "What if Alya's told her parents she thinks I'm being abused? Parents gossip like everyone else. It's a precaution."

Adrien cracked a smile at that. "She hasn't mentioned that in a while."

"That's because I've gotten better at make-up," she replied, smug.

He peered at her, eyes glancing all over her face. "You don't look like you're wearing any. "

"Because I'm not right now." Marinette laughed. "My bruises are on my elbows right now, and they're covered by my hoodie."

He looked down to her outfit. "You're not too hot in that?"

She shrugged. "It's cooler at night."

The small talk was nice, but it was delaying the inevitable.

When they walked out the theatre, they weren't holding hands. Adrien had an appearance to keep up, one that would only be thwarted if he came across as in a relationship with her when the demon came to meet them.

His nerves helped him seem like he was smitten.

"I'm sweating," he complained, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. "I'm a shiny, sweaty mess and I want to _die_."

She blew a bubble with her gum instead of answering him.

Adrien glared at her.

She started to chew obnoxiously, looking at him with raised eyebrows.

"I'm going to cry if you keep being mean to me," he declared, shoving his hands into the pockets of his trousers. "Like, full on ugly cry with snot and everything dripping down my face."

"Have some gum," Marinette coaxed, holding out the small packet that she'd gotten from her pocket. "You want fresh breath before a date, right?"

With a sigh, he took one out. "Is that why you bought it?"

She smiled. "Maybe."

"Cute," he whispered, complying with her request and popping the gum into his mouth. He scrunched his nose up at the intense flavour, the scent in the air almost immediately after he'd started chewing, and it was very evident that he wasn't enjoying it. "Can I spit it out now?"

On her toes, she made a point of sniffing his breath. "Okay."

She walked to the bin with him, putting her own gum in it.

They sat down on one of the benches outside, facing the entrance to the cinema. Her hand was on the bandalore in her pocket, just to be safe, but she doubted that anything would happen while there were bound to be cameras around.

She wondered whether demons got jobs that involved managing security cameras for the rare chance they might meet a pure human.

The dull throb was still in her head, present ever since Adrien's mother had dropped them off, and it was only as she sat beside him, their shoulders touching he kept checking the time of his phone in panic before trying to relax, that she focused on the strange feeling.

His voice cracked. "Five minutes."

"Ready to woo your new man?" she joked.

And from his glare, it was clear the joke wasn't appreciated.

She didn't blame him.

When the demon came out, he was still in his uniform.

There was no mistaking him, not when his eyes were on Adrien only.

Marinette nudged Adrien's side gently, trying to comfort him.

He made a strangled noise as the demon came closer.

"Hi," the demon greeted. "Your friend said you wanted to speak to me?"

Adrien's nerves ticks came across as shyness to anyone that didn't know him. His ears weren't red; rather, he was stuttering out his words, finding it hard to maintain eye contact with the demon, and he kept looking at Marinette with wide eyes, pleading with her to do something.

She was remarkably calm compared to him.

Marinette said that she was staying until her parents came to pick her up—a bold-faced lie—and looked the demon in the eyes as she proclaimed that she wanted to make sure that her friend was safe.

The demon's smile was all teeth.

Adrien was the one to ask, "Are you hungry?"

It was impressive how his voice didn't crack at that.

And when the answer was an affirmative, Adrien said that he knew a nice place that wasn't too far away, one that wouldn't be too busy that late at night.

His voice did quiver with that sentence.

And yet, the demon didn't think anything was odd. He even turned to Marinette and asked about her, questioning which school they went to, when her parents were coming to pick her up—

She lied about it all despite the fact the demon would forget all about the past twenty-four hours.

Marinette pretended to text her parents the location of the restaurant.

When the demon started to ask Adrien about his hobbies—a remarkably innocent topic—she interrupted them by clearing her throat before stating, "I know a shortcut."

She looked Adrien in the eyes as she said it.

He swallowed. "Okay."

It was easy.

Marinette lagged behind, getting out her phone and saying that she was just going to text her mother to see whether she was close, and reached for her bandalore with her other hand.

Adrien had picked a street that wasn't busy at night.

The element of surprise was all she had in her favour, always. Marinette had learned to make herself small, to come across as someone that wasn't important if her target happened to look at her, and with Adrien there it was all the more effective.

No one was going to look at her when there was someone so pure in front of them.

And so, when she tossed the bandalore out, the string wrapping around his legs and her arm movement causing him to smash into a nearby wall, head connecting with the bricks and causing blood to trickle out, there wasn't any resistance.

By the time they reacted, she had the bandalore around their chest, holding their arms close so they couldn't move.

She stabbed her sword through his eye, rendering the body lifeless for a few precious moments before it regenerated.

The two hearts were sliced before that could happen, ash crumpling to the damp floor, no sign of the cinema employee there any longer.

Blood had splattered onto her, and she wiped the dripping liquid from her sword on her dark hoodie before sheathing it.

It was when she heard heavy breathing that she remembered that Adrien was there at all.

He was staring down at the blood on the floor, wide-eyed with his hands balled into fists beside him, pale and looking close to throwing up.

She took a cautious step towards him.

Adrien didn't flinch away.

Marinette closed the distance between them, her steps coming to a stop just before their shoes would be touching, staring into his dazed eyes and waiting for a response.

His breathing was uneven.

She reached up, slowly cupping his cheek with her hand, turning his head so he would focus on her.

His expression was nothing short of terrified.

"You're okay," she whispered, trying to comfort him. "It's over."

And as he put his hand on top of hers, leaning into her touch, she realised that he was shaking.

Adrien wasn't used to her lifestyle and that wasn't going to change any time soon. Although he'd been nervous, he'd said that he didn't regret his choice of agreeing to go along with her plan when they were waiting—

"Adrien," she softly said. "You're okay."

"That—that was horrible," he croaked out, eyes starting to look wet as he blinked more than necessary. "How do you... do that?"

"I'm used to it," she bluntly replied, still meeting his gaze. "You won't have to."

He sighed. "You don't know that."

"I'm sorry for involving you," Marinette said, tracing her thumb tentatively, mimicking what he did when they held hands. "You shouldn't have had to see that."

His voice was quiet. "I'm fine."

"You're shaking," she pointed out.

"It's cold."

Marinette snorted. "It's June."

"It could snow in June," he lamely replied.

When she dropped her hand she realised that she'd smeared blood on his face. Horrified, Marinette tried to use her sleeve to scrub it off, but most of it was already dried. Adrien didn't look like he was going to vomit when she told him what had happened, but he'd grown quiet again.

He was staring at the blood on the floor instead of her.

There were a few smears left on his face, but it didn't look like blood.

"I'll say it's ice cream if my parents ask," he said.

"I'm sure they'll believe that," she muttered.

"Don't bully me," Adrien complained, sounding more like himself as he shoved his hands into his pockets, shoulders slumped. "I doubt they're going to ask that many questions."

"Your mother's going to wonder if you met my grandfather with ice cream all over your face," she replied, raising her eyebrows. "That's not a very good impression, is it?"

He wrinkled his nose. "I've never met him."

"And we're keeping it that way, yeah?"

They took the bus to near his house.

-x-

For good measure, Marinette went back to the same area the following day, arriving close to thirty minutes before the murder had occurred.

She had her headphones on, music playing lowly, and was texting Adrien while her other hand was resting on her bandalore inside of her pocket.

The regeneration was a blink and she would've missed it kind of thing—if anything, it looked like the demon had appeared out of thin air, whole and put together, a dazed expression as he took in his surroundings.

Marinette killed him again before leaving.

Missing for two nights was harder to explain to human parents, wasn't it?

She didn't make it to do it a third time.

Adrien didn't protest her suggestion of not going to the cinema for a while. There wasn't much time between all the exams at school, and weekends were being used to study and revise.

Alya's course that she was aiming to get into was demanding, so she was hauling herself into the library during their lunch breaks, trying to get as much done as possible.

Nino seemed like the description of calm compared to her.

Thankfully, Adrien wasn't that panicked. He admitted that he was bad at studying, that he often got distracted when he sat down and tried to go over his notes and textbooks when in his bedroom.

She wasn't surprised in the slightest.

All the exams they had lasted over two weeks.

However, within that first week, the biggest surprise came.

Chloé had finished killing a demon a moment prior—her hand bloody, splatters across her face and blonde-coloured hair, standing out greatly—and it was with a perplexed expression as she stared down at her hand.

Marinette was wiping the blood off of her blade that she'd used to hold the demon down. "What's up?"

"I—" Chloé cutting herself off with uncertainty was the first sign that something was wrong.

She did love to hear herself, after all.

And when Chloé proceeded place her hand over her heart, spreading out her fingers and watching the blood smear on her clothing, Marinette wasn't given a chance to react before Chloé used enough strength to break her bones, gouging through the flesh and gore as she fell down to her knees, surely trying to touch her actual heart.

Marinette's sword clattered to the ground.

She surged forward, garbled words spilling from her lips, not making sense as she reached out to hold onto Chloé's shoulders, confusion and horror very much present.

And yet, Chloé was _smiling_.

Chloé took her hand away—skin under her nails, blood steadily dripping onto the floor—and she was laughing, a wheezy noise that sounded breathless and full of wonder all at once.

"Chloé?" Marinette called, her stomach churning and threatening to join the blood on the floor.

The wound healed over before her eyes.

The hole in Chloé's shirt didn't, though.

"Two," Chloé said through her laughter, pushing her hair away from her face and causing blood to smear across her forehead. "I've got two hearts again."

Marinette was so close to throwing up. "And you had to check that by trying to kill yourself?"

"I had to make sure," Chloé simply replied, standing up on non-shaking legs. She would've looked like an example of poise and elegance if it wasn't for the gaping hole in her shirt that was covered in scarlet. "That fucking took forever."

It was almost a year.

Without her help, Chloé would've been too weak to kill a lot of the demons that they'd come across. With Marinette, they had the element of surprise, along with a weapon that was capable of restraining demons for long periods of time, too strong for them to break through.

If Chloé was on her own, it might've taken years.

Marinette's stomach was still protesting as she stood up, wiping blood onto her shorts. "You could've given me some warning."

Chloé's smile was all teeth. "Were you worried about me?"

She scoffed. "Is that such a surprise?"

"Look at you," Chloé cooed, reaching out and ruffling Marinette's hair with enough force that her nails scratched her scalp in the process. "You're a good little human, aren't you?"

She batted her hand away. "Fuck off."

"You up for another hit?" Chloé questioned, swiping her tongue across her lower lip. "I've got the perfect person in mind."

Marinette had to ask, "What did they do to you?"

"Well, they spat on me a couple of months ago," was the response to that. "About time I get to do the same to them, right?"

It wasn't that Chloé had suddenly unlocked an obscene amount of power; rather, she was more confident in her abilities, had to struggle less to jump high—which she usually refused to do, saying it ruined her shoes—but that didn't mean that she was the strongest out of everyone.

On the spectrum of hearts, she was on the lower end, but others that had been killed and reset to zero weren't anywhere near her.

Demons were immortal, after all. If they'd gained all their possible power in an instant, it would've been pointless to live for so many years.

Adrien didn't quite understand her excitement.

"That's... good?" he said quietly when she announced the news of Chloé's second heart. "Isn't it?"

Marinette wetted her lips. "Yes."

"I'm glad you're happy," he murmured, adjusting the fan so it was pointing at the two of them. "I'm a little scared at the thought of another strong demon being out there, but if you're happy, I'm happy."

There was always that possibility, wasn't there?

"You're never going to meet her," she assured him. "It's fine."

"If you say so," Adrien replied, settling down again. "I don't really understand everything, but good for her."

It was to be expected that he wouldn't be fully supportive. Chloé was everything that he feared—a being that was only going to want to kill him when they set eyes on him—and him knowing that Chloé threw tantrums when she wasn't happy with her outfit wasn't something that helped him in the long run.

Normalising demons wouldn't change his perception.

Marinette had yet to meet another demon that would turn out like Chloé; for all she knew, Chloé was an anomaly, someone that grew interested in her after seeing her kill a demon rather than murdering her outright.

No one else would've given her a chance to talk.

As strange as that was, she wasn't going to question it, not any more.

Chloé was her friend.

Her friend that loved to murder, didn't care for humans lives other than hers, and liked to doll up with make-up when she was so much as going to the local store.

Adrien admitted, "I'm glad that you have someone with you when you're outside."

She tilted her head to the side curiously. "You are?"

"Yeah," he confirmed, pushing his hair away from his face. "Chloé's there with you a lot, right? I mean, that's how she got her new heart, right? You're like a murder tag-team."

Marinette laughed. "Sometimes, yeah."

"And I know she'd look after you," Adrien said. "Even if she's a demon."

There was no doubt in his voice.

She couldn't describe how happy it made her.

"You don't have to worry about me," she told him, nudging him gently with her elbow. "I'm still alive, aren't I? That's not going to change any time soon."

He squinted. "That's not reassuring when you hurt yourself weekly."

"It heals in, like, a night," she replied, waving her hand dismissively. "It's not a big deal."

"If I got any of those injuries, you'd ask me all about them," he pointed out.

Marinette denied, "I would not."

"You asked me about my arm last week," he reminded her, lifting up the sleeve of his shirt to show the barely-there colour on his skin. "You didn't believe me when I said I tripped."

"I have little to no knowledge of how bad human injuries are," she responded.

That caused him to laugh. "Try to sound like less of a robot, yeah?"

"I know bruises, but my injuries are far worse for a bruise like yours," she mumbled in her defence, crossing her arms. "And you didn't tell me you fell over."

"Because it was in the middle of the night," Adrien explained, amusement clear in his voice. "Did you want me to text and wake you up with that news? Besides, I forgot about it until you pointed out my arm."

She sniffed. "That's not the point."

He patted her head.

She didn't knock his hand away.

-x-

With good results for her exams, she got accepted into the same course as Adrien at a school that was within walking distance. While she'd applied to other courses within the same place to be close to him, she was glad with the outcome.

The strangest part of it all was realising that they wouldn't be attending with Alya and Nino any more.

On their last day, Alya threw her arms around her, pulling her into a tight hug.

Marinette stiffly returned it, awkwardly patting her back to try and be comforting.

Nino offered her a bump of his fist before asking whether it was okay to hug it. It wasn't as tight, but it wasn't the worst first hug she'd had with someone.

The two of them insisted that she should text them whenever to meet up over the summer, and continue to talk to them even when they were at a different school.

She wasn't teary-eyed, but Adrien was.

Instead of going home straight away, they all went for ice cream instead.

Marinette set up a plan to hang out with Alya the following week at her house. The mention of her grandfather was never brought up any more, and none of them asked to visit where she lived any more, not after she'd denied it for so long.

There was no road trip planned for that summer.

Chloé didn't suggest it.

Instead of it feeling like the weekend all the time, Marinette woke up to an empty home. Chloé had to go to work to continue putting on a good face and embezzling behind their backs (she'd proudly said she'd gotten close to a million by that point), meaning she was gone for most of the day, leaving Marinette with so many options for what she could do.

She lazed around in her pyjamas at first, picking up another comic that Adrien had lent her and slowly eating leftovers from the previous night that were left in the fridge.

Around noon, she got a text from Adrien that he was awake.

It was a monotone routine that she managed to stay with for almost two weeks. She'd met with Alya between then, visited Adrien in the evening after she'd finished helping Chloé out, but she was growing restless during the day.

She wandered out and got her supplies for school.

Remembering Adrien's comment that she had no sense of style, she bought a new t-shirt that was loose enough to not show her figure.

It wasn't black for once.

And when she turned up at his house a few nights later, dressed in the pink shirt with shorts underneath, his surprised look was more than worth it.

There was a lot of kissing.

She had no complaints about that.

Adrien didn't go out often over the summer. When he was younger, that was when his mother had sent him to his grandfather's, so it raised the question whether she knew more than she was letting on.

At least, that's what Adrien thought.

"But what _if_?" he insisted.

"If she knew," Marinette started, picking at her nail varnish and causing a fleck of black to fall onto her knee. "She wouldn't let you out ever, you know? It's not like demons only come out in the summer or something."

He wasn't letting it go. "Maybe she thinks they do."

"You're welcome to bring it up with her, if you want," she offered, half-joking. "I'm sure that would go well."

Adrien's expression turned thoughtful.

"That was a joke," Marinette quickly explained, a bit panicked at that thought. "You're—you're _not_ going to do that, are you?"

He sighed. "No, she'll probably just think I've gone mad."

"Great, never bring up that idea again," she replied, patting his shoulder. "The less people that know the better, yeah?"

"No one's allowed in our secret club," he agreed, nodding along with his words. "We're not a cult that recruits other members."

She blinked. "Sure."

"I am starting to get paranoid whenever someone look at me, though," Adrien started, pulling his knees to his chest, blanket falling down to his ankles. He didn't adjust it. "You're always the one that notices something's off, right? Am I missing something?"

Marinette shrugged. "Try to be more aware of your surroundings, I guess."

"Amazing advice, thank you," he muttered. "You're so helpful."

"I'm serious!" she exclaimed. "You don't have to shiftily look around all the time. Just—if someone's looking at you more than normal and keeps appearing where you are in a public place, you might as well assume they're a demon. Better safe than sorry, you know?"

He bit the inside of his cheek. "Trust no one."

"See, now that's amazing advice," she replied with a smile. "Innocent until proven guilty is full of shit."

He laughed.

When he went out for dinner with his parents, as always, he gave her the location before they even got in the car, and she was hovering outside to make sure he was okay.

Adrien texted her until he got told off for using his phone at the table.

There was no incident.

He lounged around in bed most days, staying in his bedroom and browsing the internet. When she came to visit in the evenings, his bed was unmade, sometimes he had empty cans on his desk that he quickly tried to hide with his ears turning red, and it was obvious that he was spending the majority of his time there.

His mother was home a lot more, so they baked together, with Adrien sending pictures of their creations.

If he was in charge of decorating, they came out looking kind of sad.

He was still proud.

Without Adrien, Marinette met up with Alya and Nino for the day.

Adrien stayed home and watched films with his mother instead.

And when Marinette admitted to all of them that she wasn't doing anything for her birthday—going with the date Fu had given her on her identification—she should've been suspicious when they accepted it so easily.

Adrien texted her before noon.

It was rare for him to be up so early.

When she called him out on that, he promptly ignored it, inviting her round his for the day instead. Before she could answer, he said that he'd already cleared it with his parents and that they were expecting her to come round.

She hadn't seen either of his parents since the cinema.

Adrien opened the door before she got to ring the bell.

He came bounding out without shoes on, meeting her halfway up his lawn, wrapping her in a hug as he exclaimed, "You're here!"

Confused, she returned the hug, wrapping her arms loosely around his waist. "Yes?"

"I thought you were going to bail, to be honest," he admitted, leaning back so he could look at her, smile reaching his eyes. "But you're here and totally not a coward. That's great."

Her brow furrowed. "When have I ever _bailed_?"

"Well, you used to refuse to meet up—"

"That's different," she retorted, cutting him off. "Why would it count as ditching if I never agreed in the first place? Be serious."

Adrien winked. "I'm always serious about you."

"I'm going to kick you," she declared.

"Do it," he goaded. "I dare you."

She squinted. "What if your parents are watching?"

"Only my mother's home," he replied, pushing her hair over her shoulder. "And I doubt she's peering through the window. I told her not to. Also, she'd probably think I deserve it and be on your side."

Marinette grinned. "Understandable."

"Don't team up against me," Adrien complained. "You're supposed to love me."

"I never signed a contract to always agree with you," she pointed out, leaning into his touch when he cupped her cheek with one hand. "I'm allowed to call you out on your bullshit, you know. Especially if it means kicking you."

"Abuse," he insisted, leaning down so their noses brushed before he pressed a chaste kiss to her lips.

It was over before it even started.

"I _knew_ it!"

The exclamation came from the front door that Adrien had left open when he came bounding out. Alya was standing there, pointing at them with a wide smile, not at all looking upset about the revelation.

Adrien groaned, but he didn't pull away. Instead, he scowled at Alya, calling out, "You said you were going to hide!"

"You took too long!" Alya threw her hands up in exasperation. "I came to see what the hold-up was, and it turns out you two were just too busy making out to come in—"

"We were _not_!" Adrien spluttered.

"We kind of were," Marinette interjected, taking a step back from him to adjust her clothing, making herself look presentable. "Hi, Alya."

Alya's smile was full of teeth. "Hey, dude."

"I was saying hi," Adrien muttered, shifting on his naked feet, the grass and dirt surely uncomfortable to stand on for too long. "She didn't even know you were here, Alya!"

"Not that I'm complaining," Marinette said, looking between the two with a confused smile. "But what's going on?"

There was a moment where Adrien and Alya made eye contact before staring back at her, not saying a word.

Marinette sighed.

"Come on," Adrien said, taking her hand and pulling her towards his house. He paused in the entranceway to wipe his feet on the doormat, trying to get the dirt off before stepping into his pristine home. "You'll see when we go inside."

As soon as she got into the hallway, Nino appeared and fired a party popper at her.

Marinette flinched.

"Happy birthday!"

She didn't know what to say.

And it turned out she didn't need to. Adrien continued to hold her hand, guiding her through into the living that was decorated in balloons like it had been for his birthday, and there on the table in front of them all was a birthday cake that had unlit candles on top.

The icing was sloppy, clearly matching the other desserts he'd been making with his mother.

Her eyes felt hot.

"Oh," she whispered.

Adrien squeezed her hand. "This isn't too much, is it?"

It was reminiscent to his birthday party all those months ago. Alya and Nino with party poppers in their hands, wide smiles as they gestured for her to come in and sit down so they could shove a party hat on her head.

Adrien's mother had her camera again, telling them to look at her and smile.

Marinette felt like she was on the verge of tears the whole time, but it wasn't from sadness.

She'd never had a birthday party for her before.

When Alya blurted out that she'd saw them kissing, the one who was most surprised of them all was Adrien's mother.

She cooed, reaching out and pinching her son's cheeks, asking why he hadn't introduced her as his girlfriend before.

Adrien looked mortified.

And Marinette just laughed, not uncomfortable in the slightest.

Nino nodded his head, flashing them a sign of approval in the form of a thumbs up, and that was all there really was to it. They didn't ask any invasive questions, didn't ask how long it had been going on, though Alya did suggest that they could go on a double date.

"That wouldn't be any different to normal," Adrien muttered.

Alya childishly stuck her tongue out at that.

They stayed there for most of the day, lounging around Adrien's living room and bedroom—to which he still had to have the door open, no matter the amount of people inside—and all three of them insisted that she needed to keep her party hat, putting it back on her when she'd taken it off when they weren't looking.

Marinette wasn't too upset with it.

It was a nice day, one of the best that they'd had. Adrien baking her a cake was something she'd never expected.

She'd never thought to mention it to Chloé.

It wasn't important to demons, was it?

Yet, when Marinette said that she was too full from all the cake she ate, Chloé had scoffed and asked, "Why didn't you bring me any, then? Fucking rude."

"It's my cake," she retorted, rolling her eyes. "Why would I bring you any?"

"Yours?" Chloé questioned.

"Friends made it for me," she said with a shrug, moving her foot and scuffing her sock-clad heel against the floor. "I've never had someone make me a cake before. It was nice."

"How old are you now?" Chloé squinted. "Fourteen?"

She raised her middle finger. "Sixteen, I guess. Not like I really know."

"Okay." And with that, Chloé stood up, rummaging through the fridge before she returned with an unopened bottle of wine that had been sitting in there for a few weeks. "Here you go."

She stared. "What?"

"You want a present, right?" Chloé gestured towards the bottle. "Go wild. Make bad choices, yeah? Or we could go to the club and get you an actual good drink."

Of those two options, she'd much prefer to drink when she wasn't wondering whether everyone around her was a demon.

It really was a bad choice.

Marinette had about a third of that bottle of wine, Chloé drinking the rest, before another came and replaced it. They weren't using glasses, instead straight from it, and she felt her laughter coming out easier, shoulders relaxing, and she didn't hesitate when shoving Chloé away from her when she'd come out with a rude remark.

It was a nice evening, even though she ended up vomiting in the toilet.

Come morning, she didn't have the headache or awful feeling that she'd expected from being hungover.

When Adrien woke up, instead of responding to his message, she called him.

His voice was slurred from sleep. "Eh?"

"I think my weird ass healing works on alcohol," she blurted.

There was a moment of silence.

Then, in a hoarse voice, he asked, "What are you on about?"

She was probably more amused than she should've been when she explained and he reacted by calling Chloé irresponsible. He insisted that she'd said that she wasn't going to go out that evening, and Marinette pointed out that they'd had the alcohol already stocked in the fridge.

"It was kind of fun, but I can't really let my guard down like that," she said. "I'm not going to get drunk again, I promise."

"Good," he chastised. "If I hear that you've thrown up again, I'll—I don't know, I'll do something."

She snorted. "I'm quaking in my boots."

"You aren't even wearing any!"

"Yeah, and you're not dressed," she replied. "Are you really in any position to judge me?"

"I haven't even gotten out of bed yet," he muttered. "You called before I could go and brush my teeth. Plus, I really need to pee."

"...Go."

He laughed. "Okay, see you."

-x-

Adrien's call came late in the afternoon.

"Hey," she greeted, falling back against her bed, hair tickling her neck. "What's up?"

"So." His voice was higher than normal. "I might've forgot to tell you that I'm out right now."

That got her to sit up. "You're _out_?"

"Yeah," he confirmed with a laugh that sounded entirely forced. "And I think I'm being followed? Like, some woman's been looking at me for a while and kept going in the same shops as me, and now I've made the excuse that I'm meeting up with you so my mother won't be in the way—"

Clumsily with one hand, she slipped on her shoes. "How long have you been out?"

"An hour?" He didn't sound convinced. "We went for coffee and cake. I couldn't say no."

"You could've said," she muttered.

"I was too busy thinking about what cake to get," he admitted, the sounds of the crowd around him coming through the speaker. "I'm really sorry, but how long do you think it'll take you to get here?"

Slipping on a sleeveless hoodie that had zipped pockets for her to keep her bandalore in, she grumbled, "It's bright out."

"Yeah, so I've been circling around for a while," he replied, sounding apologetic. "If I just window shop, it'll be fine, right?"

The sun wasn't due to set for a few hours; the summer weather meant that it was hot, enough for her to feel overdressed in her jacket that was purely for practical purposes, and the area she was going to meet him was too populated for her to swing by to save time.

It wasn't night.

With a sigh, she said, "It'll be faster for me to get the bus."

His voice cracked as he asked, "You'll stay on the phone with me, right?"

"Of course," she promised. "You've got enough minutes to keep it going, yeah?"

"Should do," he confirmed.

Rather than sitting down at the bus stop, she was walking back and forth, wondering what the best way to deal with the situation was. Adrien was trying to distract her by talking about random topics; from a bookstore he went into and started reading different blurbs, trying to get her to guess what genre each book was, to sniffing candles and trying to describe to her exactly how they smelt.

It would've been endearing if he didn't quietly tell her, "There's someone else."

Incredulous, she asked, "_Two_?"

"They're kind of—glaring at each other?" he whispered, clearly trying not to be overheard. An employee thanked him for his time as he exited, able to be heard through the phone. "From across the store. It was a bit dramatic."

"...You can't call them dramatic when they literally want you to stop breathing," she muttered.

"I hide my emotions behind humour," he blurted. "Appreciate me."

Marinette sighed. "I'll appreciate you when you tell me when you're going out."

"It was one time!" he exclaimed. Then, he spoke in a more hushed voice, "I'm normally really good at telling you, right? I just—I got distracted by cake, okay? It's officially my weakness."

"I cannot believe you care about cake more than me," she said, taking her seat on the bus, managing to nab one that wasn't beside someone else. "You're supposed to be my boyfriend."

He laughed. "I won't be if I'm dead."

"Let's not joke about that," she suggested. "I might kill you myself once this is over."

"I'll gladly let you," he replied, still talking in hushed tones. "It's not how I'd ever imagined you getting your hands over my body, but beggars can't be choosers."

She didn't know what to say to that.

"I'm trying not to panic, okay," he defended himself, apparently not needing to see her expression to know her reaction. "If that means imagining you strangling me, don't kinkshame me."

"...I'm very confused right now," she murmured.

"That's fine," Adrien replied brightly. "I like being the smart one sometimes."

Marinette stayed quiet.

"I said _sometimes_!" he emphasised. "Come on, it's not like I said I'm always a genius. I mean, other than today being a prime example of that, there's also the fact that I accidentally stained my bedding pink last week—"

"Is it an accident when I told you _not_ to put all your washing in in one go?" she questioned, making a disapproving noise. "For someone so smart sometimes, you're also a complete idiot."

"Hey." He sniffed. "You're the street smarts, okay."

"That makes me sound like a hooker, but okay," she deadpanned.

He let out a scandalised laugh. "Marinette!"

When she got off the bus, he was back to describing shop items aloud to her, as if trying to entice her into buying them. He was especially focused on a fluffy pillow that he knew that Plagg would like, but couldn't justify buying it unless she liked it, too.

"That doesn't even make sense," she pointed out.

"Well, other than me, you're probably going to see it the most," he replied, thoughtful. "You like putting a pillow on your lap when it's cold, too. Outside of Plagg, you'd use it most."

It was a feat that his voice wasn't wobbling nervously any more. As time stretched out, he seemed to be calming down, accepting the situation that he was in.

They weren't going to do anything in public, after all.

"You're really set on this pillow," Marinette mused. "You could always come back and buy it another day. I don't want you to waste your money because it got bloody."

"Right." He sounded a bit strangled. "Blood, yes. There's a chance of that for today's weather."

She really tried not to laugh, but it still came through.

Rather than being offended, Adrien's response came across like a pouting child. "Don't laugh at me!"

"I'm laughing with you?" she offered.

He sniffed dramatically. "Sure."

"I'm going to look for somewhere for you to come, okay?" Marinette quietly told him. "You'll be fine waiting a bit, right?"

"I don't think I'm going to get kidnapped while sniffing perfume."

"Perfume?" she questioned, keeping him talking as she walked down a road, inspecting the buildings. "Where are you now?"

"Some department store," he replied. "I'm going to channel my inner snob and stare at designer clothing now. Wish me luck with that."

She let out a laugh. "Stick your nose in the air."

"It's higher than yours already, loser," he taunted. "How's the weather down there, eh?"

"That's only funny when it's said to tall people."

"Wrong," he denied. "It's _never_ funny."

"Yeah, and neither are puns," she shot back.

"The best response to puns is hatred," Adrien corrected her. "If someone laughs at them, I have to question their sanity. But death threats? That's the good stuff, Marinette. Sign me up for more of that."

She hummed. "So, you like to be belittled."

"Let's not get into kinks now."

"...What?" she asked.

"Oh, bless you," he murmured with a laugh. "Stay innocent, babe."

"Don't call me babe," Marinette retorted.

"Sweetheart?" Adrien asked, sounding close to laughter. "Honey?"

"You can call me by my name or nothing at all," she responded.

He clicked his tongue. "I'm trying to flirt with you."

"Focus on staying alive first, please," she replied, not missing a beat.

There were a few buildings under construction, but they were bound to have cameras protecting them. Marinette checked out some other promising areas, noting that not many were coming down the street her way—instead staying near the shops and other attractions near Adrien—but that didn't mean it was a foolproof place to kill someone.

Not when it was a plural.

She settled on one that looked rundown without a notice of construction. It had crushed cigarettes out the front, crude pictures drawn by spray paint on the brick, the front door was barely holding on by a hinge, and most of the windows were smashed.

It would have to do.

Adrien swallowed thickly. "Okay, I'll make my way there."

She wasn't going to let him walk alone.

The street was empty, no cars driving down it, though there was the noise of vehicles in the distance from the other roads. Marinette walked quickly as she went to meet up, not taking the chance for him to be snatched as soon as he was away from a crowd.

His hair was damp against his forehead, and it wasn't because of the heat.

"You're here," he whispered, clumsily putting his phone into his pocket.

Marinette paused, taking in the pale colour of his skin before taking in his choice of shoes.

Flip-flops.

Adrien's grin was shaky. "Yeah, I wasn't expecting much today."

And as they walked together, close enough that their arms kept brushing, his shoes made noise with every step. The buzzing in her head was drowned out by the sound of them, Adrien's steady breathing beside her, and the faint noise of traffic.

Other footsteps joined theirs.

"Don't look," she murmured.

Adrien's footsteps became quicker instead.

It would've been comical if he didn't look close to throwing up.

Marinette had her finger looped through the bandalore, her hand hidden with the weapon in her pocket, and she was aware of the press of her blade against her body with every step. She'd have to restrain them first, but she'd never tried to hold two at once.

She'd never had the chance to fight two.

Demons didn't team up.

"Stay away from the windows, yeah?" she whispered. "What's left of them, I mean. I don't think they'll go in another way, but there's always a chance they will."

His voice cracked as he replied, "Reassuring."

She nudged him with her elbow. "You trust me, right?"

"I do," he confirmed without hesitation. "But that doesn't mean I'm not scared."

"Try and find the bathroom," she suggested. "It might still have a lock."

"Hiding in bathrooms is becoming my thing and I'm not sure I'm here for it," he muttered.

Marinette looked over her shoulder.

They were still following.

As soon as they were through the battered front door, Adrien was running up the stairs, his flip-flops making a horrendous noise as he clumsily made his way. She could hear doors being opened and closed almost frantically while she lurked by the front.

What she didn't expect was for her breath to be knocked out of her as she was thrust forward, face and body colliding with the floor painfully. The pain she felt was abrupt, and she choked on a mixture of settled dust that had been disturbed along with spit, chest heaving as she struggled to stand up, becoming aware of a heavy weight keeping her down.

She pushed the body off of her, not as surprised as she should've been from the spurting blood from the wound where the demon's head had once been.

It fell limply onto the floor beside her.

She had limited time before the demon regenerated.

The first came through, a woman that went straight for the stairs, not sparing a glance to the fallen body. The blood covering her clothes and hands was evident, standing out even from a distance.

Marinette caught their legs with the bandalore as they made it to the top of the stairs, bringing them back down with a tug of her hand, retrieving her sword and stabbing her through the eye for a moment of peace before she could react properly.

It was as she was thrusting the blade through the second heart—all that the woman had—that she lost her breath for a second time.

The difference then was that the pain was so much worse, black spots appearing in her vision in an instant. The feeling of confusion prevalent as she was pulled back abruptly, struggling to catch her breath as she collided with a wall, her head hitting it painfully enough to rival the burning of her chest.

It hurt to breathe.

Her blade had fallen to the floor, joining the pile of ash from the eliminated demon, but the bandalore had returned snugly to her hand despite her sudden change of position.

She felt close to vomiting, head spinning dangerously as she looked down, pressing her hand against the pain at the back of her head.

It felt warm.

There was blood, then.

Through blurry eyes, she looked up to see the demon had regenerated his head; he was standing where she'd been before, bloodied shoulders and shirt standing out against the pristine skin of his neck and face, holding up her sword and inspecting it, turning it so it could catch the light.

The pain in her chest was excruciating as she tried to stand up.

Marinette fell back down onto the floor with a wheeze, blood steadily coming out through her clothing and thickly coating her hand, and her lungs were protesting any big breaths, the quick and shallow ones being the most successful.

Moving her arm made the pain worse, but it was easier than standing up. It was unclear whether her ribs had been broken from the demons stronghold before he'd thrown her across the room, but when that injury was combined with the pounding her head, it was hard to focus.

She felt dizzy.

And yet, she managed to sluggishly flick her wrist, sending the bandalore out to wrap around the demon as her head started to feel heavy. Her other hand had fallen down to her side, sticky and wet from the blood of her head, and it was with another clumsy move that she tugged the demon back, causing them to stumble and drop the blade as the bandalore constricted and grew tighter around him.

She didn't pay attention to what was coming from his mouth.

Instead, Marinette kept her loose grip on the bandalore, using her free hand to touch the wall behind her, feeling the harshness of the wall and trying to stand up, scratching her nails into it in frustration when she was too light-headed to succeed.

The laughter that echoed wasn't her own.

Although she was incapacitated for a while, too busy suffering from her sudden head wound to promptly finish the demon off, he wasn't going anywhere. The bandalore could withhold his strength, wouldn't be torn through if he wiggled and try and bite through it—something she'd been surprised about when a demon first tried it—and they were just as stuck as she was.

Her head felt fuzzy, that was the best way to describe it.

Resigned to sitting on the floor, Marinette made a pained noise as she shifted to unzip the pocket on her front, retrieving her cell phone that hadn't been crushed from the altercation.

She could hear Adrien's ringtone as she called him.

He hadn't thought about putting it on silent.

Tightening the bandalore enough to crush the demon's ribs, unfortunately not enough to kill him, Marinette choked out, "H-hey, Adrien."

She could hear him breathing. "Are you okay?"

"Not really," she managed to stutter out, feeling woozy from turning her head to look in the direction of the stairs that he was bound to down come. "I might need you to come and—and kill this demon for me."

"I'm sorry," he started, confusion clear in his voice. "What did you just say?"

And when she coughed, she wasn't surprised when she wiped the back of her hand to see blood there.

Something was definitely broken from the strength that the demon had used to lift and throw her.

With another tug of her hand, the demon stopped spitting threats for a few precious moments since their heart stopped. She hoped it had been squashed, just so he'd feel the pain she was in for a fraction of the time.

Adrien's footsteps were barely audible compared to the pounding of her pulse in her head.

Rather than struggling to put her phone back in her pocket, Marinette put it on the dirty floor beside her. The specks of dirt—maybe some ash from the fallen demon before—were sticking to her slick hand, making her feel even worse.

She was sure that she looked a mess slumped against the wall, blood covering one of her hands and what she expected to be a dazed expression on her face, but she didn't think it qualified the horrified expression on his face when he turned to catch sight of her.

Adrien put his hand on the wall to stabilise himself, gawking with his gaze only on her before the demon struggled to life, thrashing in the restraints and starting to spit out curses.

Startled, Adrien took a step back.

Marinette cleared her throat. "It's fine, ignore him."

Adrien was frozen, eyes focused on the struggling body—an adult man that was tied up, looking similar to those possessed people in films that Alya liked to watch with her—before he took in a shuddering breath.

He gave the body a wide berth as he crossed the room to her, sinking to his knees and gently cradling her head in his hands, asking quietly, "What happened?"

"We can deal with this after," Marinette told him, wetting her chapped lips. "We—you need to kill him so we can get out of here. If I try and stand up, I might vomit."

Her chest protested when she took in a deep breath.

He noticed her pain. "Marinette?"

"I'm fine," she lied, vision being blurry and barely-there when she shifted to sit upright, adjusting her grip on her bandalore. "You see my sword on the floor there, yeah?"

He didn't look away from her. "Yes?"

"I need you to—" Marinette coughed. "You know where to stab, right?"

His eyes grew wide. "What?"

"I can't," she choked out, breathing being laboured. She pressed her hand against her chest, trying to pinpoint the pain, but it was all very present in her upper-half whenever she tried to do too much—which was talking more, apparently. "You need to."

Adrien's voice was but a whisper. "Me?"

"Yes," she insisted. She moved her hand again, placing it over her heart before guiding it to other places on her body, looking into his eyes as she explained, "The first heart's here, then there might be another one or two. All you—all you need to do is make sure they're all struck, okay?"

"Marinette—"

"You won't have to use much pressure," she said, blinking to try and readjusting her vision. "It'll slip in easily. And he won't get untangled, so all you have to look out is him trying to bite you."

She couldn't see whether he was as panicked as he sounded. "Can't we—can't we leave him and go get you some help?"

"You know we can't," she murmured, leaning into his touch as he brushed hair out of her sweaty face, pressing a kiss to her forehead. "You—"

The pounding in her head was getting to be too much.

It could've been the blood loss from the wound on her head, or all the time that she'd been breathing with her lungs protesting, pain apparent with every moment that she made. But with the bandalore in her hand, Adrien was safe—

Her eyes felt heavy.

"I'm—I'm fine," she stuttered out, head drooping despite her words.

She made a pained noise as she helped sit her upright, gently resting her head against the wall, accidentally brushing her wound in the process so she sucked in a sharp breath.

He was calling out her name.

She tried to focus on breathing instead.

Marinette didn't have enough energy left to open her eyes.

When she woke up, she was on a bed.

That was a good sign, then.

And as she tried to sit up, hissing in pain and squeezing her eyes shut again, she held up her hand to press against her forehead, trying to get rid of the dizziness that had suddenly appeared.

The faint buzzing that was almost always there wasn't present. Her chest still throbbed, but she could breathe easily, lungs not protesting from the movements, and when she managed to sit upright, she wasn't on the verge of throwing up from the sensations.

She was in a bedroom.

The duvet that was pooling on her lap was of nice quality, but not one that she recognised. The contents of the room didn't give hints to where she was, other than that it certainly wasn't a hospital.

Her dirty clothing was on the back of a wooden chair across the room. She'd been changed into a shirt that hung off her shoulder and pyjamas trousers that had been rolled up to her knees, along with folded at the waist in an attempt to get them to fit her.

On the bedside table, her cellphone was placed within clear view.

She could hear Adrien's ringtone as she called.

He still hadn't put it on silent.

Instead of answering, there was the sound of fast footsteps before the bedroom door flung open, Adrien not wasting any time in crossing the room to kneel on the bed beside her.

He'd changed clothes.

He gently cupped her face, inspecting her with worry clear in his expression. "How do you feel?"

She blinked.

And as fast as he'd appeared, two more came into view in the doorway.

Nino was holding onto the doorway, wide-eyed and paler than normal as he gawked at her, his disbelief more than apparent.

Alya's surprise wasn't as silent.

"Marinette!" she exclaimed, coming to stand and hover by the bed, looking frazzled. "You're—you're okay?"

Swallowing, Marinette was aware of how dry her throat felt.

"We can get you some sugar or something," Adrien suggested, voice as gentle as his touch as he brushed her hair out of her face, continuing to check her for injuries. "That'll combat the blood loss, right?"

Her voice was hoarse. "Why are we here?"

"I—" With a smile that didn't reach his eyes, he admitted, "I didn't know where else to go? I couldn't drag you back to mine with my parents there, and Nino mentioned that his were gone, so—"

"He called me up, asking to crash here," Nino explained, sounding calmer than he looked. "I didn't—I wasn't expecting you to be hurt."

"I'm fine," she denied, tentatively touching the back of her head with her fingertips. Blood had dried in her hair, but the wound had mostly closed and healed over, a tiny scab leftover. "I'm not—"

"I kind of told them already," Adrien blurted, interrupting her. "I... I didn't know what to do."

She stared at him. "You told them?"

"Bit hard to deny when saw your cuts heal," Alya said shakily. "Any chance you can explain that?"

Marinette breathed out audibly.


	4. 04

**AN: **I originally uploaded four + five as one chapter but had to split them. If you read the original four that was up for an hour(?) you've read it all. I've slaved away for months to finish this for you, Chek. I hope you enjoy this despite how much it's strayed from the original plot. I struggled with the ending a lot because I didn't want Marinette to come out as a complete psychopath. There's murder, a lot of vomiting, Chloé fulfills her purpose for me including her in the first place, and Marinette decides to solve her problems with violence. You can find upcoming teasers for stories and ask questions on my tumblr (_xiueryn_).

_Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Chat Noir © Thomas Astruc_

With Alya and Nino in with the knowledge of what she did, it brought up a lot of questions.

Originally, Marinette had wanted to explain her increased healing only, not wanting to burden them with knowledge that wouldn't do anything for them in the long-run. She didn't account for Adrien's nervous rambling while she was unconscious.

Nino was the one to ask her what he meant by demons.

Marinette almost choked at that.

They were outsiders, not meant to be included in the supernatural part of the world—and yet, despite how uncomfortable and nervous they looked as they pulled up chairs to sit by her bed, it was clear that they wanted to know.

She had to go to the toilet first, thankful she hadn't repeated the experience of being knocked out and emptying her bladder in her friend's bed.

It was Nino's guest room.

She'd stared in the mirror, noting the smears of blood that someone had surely tried to wipe off of her. The cuts and scraps that would've been on her face from being shoved had healed completely, fresh bruises developing and starting to pop up, and she noted how the clothes were too big for her, engulfing her and looking like they'd fall off at any moment.

The rolled over waistband didn't do much.

With Adrien turning up at Nino's house covered in blood that wasn't his own and wasn't hers, it meant that they couldn't get away without not saying much.

Adrien tried to do most of the talking, speaking quickly and gesturing with his hands the whole time, nerves clear from how he kept running his hand through his hair and babbling non-stop.

It was to be expected that the explanation of demons wasn't accepted.

Why _would_ they believe it?

Alya and Nino were sheltered. As far as Marinette knew, the worst they'd seen was a fight at school where a girl had broken another's nose and had gotten suspended when they were children.

That didn't hold a candle to what she saw on a weekly basis.

"Bruises," Marinette started, pointing to the developing ones on her face. "I'm not being abused by my family. It's because I'm fighting demons."

That brought up more questions.

If it had just been her there, they wouldn't have believed her. But Adrien—

They'd grown up with him. It was clear that they trusted him more than her. She wasn't hurt by that.

She'd trust Adrien over herself any day.

There was wariness in their eyes—the way Alya's gaze lingered on her before looking away, not able to make eye contact for too long.

Adrien was trying his best to make them understand. He was desperately telling them that she'd saved him from being hurt, that she'd intervened before he would've been killed for the purpose of power.

It was too much information all at once.

Adrien hadn't mentioned that she'd killed anyone.

They were going to keep it that way.

"Why didn't—why didn't you call the police?" Alya asked.

Marinette almost laughed. "And tell them what? That Adrien—"

"It's not like that," Adrien said quietly. "It's not—most people don't _know_."

"But you do," Nino pointed out.

With permission from his mother, Adrien was allowed to sleepover. It had taken some persuasion since he'd left her that afternoon under the impression that he was meeting up with Marinette.

Alya wasn't going anywhere.

The four of them ended up in the kitchen, idly eating instant noodles that Nino had found in his cupboard. Marinette had offered to order food, saying that her wallet had enough money in it, but Alya and Nino turned her down without hesitation.

They stayed up late (long past Nino's preferred schedule of going to bed early), sitting at the table and quietly talking, trying to sort out the facts. While it seemed like Alya and Nino were humouring them, not quite believing everything that they heard, there was only so much they could deny.

The two of them believed Marinette healed quickly and that her and Adrien had come to Nino's doorstep, covered in blood that was either their own or from someone else entirely, and that they were adamant that they couldn't call the police.

It was surely the trust in Adrien that had them keeping what had happened a secret.

Despite her saying that she was fine with the sofa, Marinette was coaxed back into the bedroom she'd woken up in to sleep.

Adrien slept on a sofa in the living room.

The morning consisted of sleepy conversation, not the hard questions that she'd expected, and the dark circles under Adrien's eyes were even worse because of his terrible sleep schedule.

He left Nino's house looking like he hadn't had a good sleep for days, while Marinette's face was covered in bruises and she was still wearing the clothes that she'd been changed into.

Alya admitted that it was her that did it. It was a pyjama set that belonged to Nino.

He said she didn't have to return it.

With the clothes she'd been wearing before in a plastic bag, she walked with Adrien hand-in-hand, talking quietly and avoiding the glaring subject that they'd brought two more people into their trouble. Adrien was instead fretting that he was going to get grounded because he had to throw his shirt away since the blood was bound to never come fully out of it.

He wanted to avoid that ordeal by pretending he forgot it at Nino's.

"Sure she'll believe that?" Marinette asked.

His frown was all the answer she needed.

As they walked, his flip-flops made noise, filling any silence between them.

His thumb traced gentle patterns onto her skin, comforting her.

He had blood underneath his nails.

They were avoiding the subject.

It was when they turned onto the end of his street, both of them falling to a stop by the signpost, that she could really look at him.

"I'm sorry," she murmured.

"Don't be," Adrien replied softly. "It's not—I'd never blame you for that. I'm the one that came out for cake, remember?"

She squeezed his hand, trying to convey what she couldn't through words. "You shouldn't have had to do that."

"I'm trying to forget it ever happened," he confessed in a whisper. "It just—it seems like a dream? A nightmare seems more fitting. It doesn't... I haven't come to terms with it being real yet."

Wrapping her arms around his waist into a loose hug, she rested her head against his chest. "I'm here if you want to talk."

"That's my line to you," he replied, a shaky laugh escaping him. "You really are out to impersonate me, aren't you?"

"It would be pretty great to be you," she said. "You're wonderful."

"Careful," Adrien started, pressing a kiss into her hair. "I might start to think you're flirting with me."

With a noise of agreement, she took a step back, adjusting her oversized trousers so they were sitting comfortably on her waist. "We can't have that."

"I should go." He sighed, looking down his street with a frown. "I'd offer for you to come in, but my mother's going to pester me about why I was with you and ended up with Nino."

"I'll walk you halfway," she offered.

Adrien didn't protest to that.

In the days that followed, Alya and Nino texted her more than they had all year.

They were curious, which was understandable, and the majority of the questions were them asking whether Adrien was right or not.

She wasn't upset that they were getting the information from him first.

The blade hadn't gone unnoticed, not when Adrien had shoved it back into the holster around her waist when she was unconscious and it hadn't shrunk that extra inch to fit in properly. Adrien had taken it off of her before Alya had changed her clothes.

When they asked to see it, Marinette rejected that without hesitation.

Showing it to Adrien had required a lot of trust.

As much as she liked Alya and Nino, she wasn't at that stage yet. They weren't demons that could kill her in a heartbeat, sure, but that didn't mean she was ready to show them what she'd been protecting for the most part of her life.

She couldn't tell if they were offended by that or not.

Alya asked a lot of questions about demons, treating them like the villains from films they'd watched together. It was blatant that she didn't fully believe, that she was treating it almost like a joke—

Marinette wasn't offended.

Adrien was.

When they were alone in his room—his parents sleeping without knowledge of her being there—he had tears prickling in his eyes as he explained how his friends had been reacting, pestering him for answers.

"It's—" Adrien sucked in a loud breath, wrapping his arms around his legs, knees touching his chest. "It's not a joke. They shouldn't—it's not something to treat like that."

He was more emotional than her.

Adrien always had been; he was the one more in touch with his feelings, caring about others around him, even strangers that they came across.

She didn't think of him badly.

"They don't get it," Marinette reminded him, tilting her head back and staring up at the ceiling as she idly pet Plagg from where he was stretched out across her lap. "To them this—this isn't really real, you know? It'll take them actually seeing it to fully understand."

He sighed. "They're never going to see."

"That's good, isn't it?" she mused, running her fingers across Plagg's head. "Having them involved will only cause trouble."

Adrien started hesitantly, "Marinette—"

"I don't blame you," she cut in before he could start his apologies again. "You did the right thing. If you took me to the hospital, it would've been a disaster. It was the only option you had."

His words were but a mumble. "I still feel like I messed up."

"Messing up means us getting caught doing something nefarious," she replied.

"That's a big word for you," he remarked.

And when she turned her head to look at him, his forehead was pressed against his knees with his eyes closed.

Marinette leaned over, careful not to startle Plagg as she rested against Adrien's shoulder. She breathed out slowly and closed her eyes as she said, "You could always talk to them."

He snorted. "I _am_."

"About your feelings," she retorted. "They're not going to make fun of you if they can—can actually see what it's like for you. I think they're so detached to the idea of it being real because they're only convinced I'm some kind of mutant."

"They are not," he muttered. "They've never said that."

"They haven't said anything," Marinette shot back. "That's not much better, is it?"

Adrien had to ask, "What did you want them to say?"

She swallowed.

There was a beat of silence.

"I don't know," she eventually admitted in a whisper.

She didn't flinch in surprise when Plagg started to knead her lap, his claws going through her clothing.

Adrien invited her to his home the following day to meet up with Alya and Nino, but she rejected the offer after confirming that they weren't going to leave the house at all.

It was a heart-to-heart that the three of them needed to have where she would've felt out of place. She knew that they cared for her to some extent, but it was Adrien's feelings that had been hurt, not hers.

She was out of touch with emotions.

Adrien was the one that could connect with them and try and get them to understand. He'd already lived through coming to terms with demons existing, though his introduction had been terrifying in a completely different way compared to theirs.

He had her permission to show the pictures of her injuries.

There wasn't much point putting limitations on their knowledge, was there?

It hurt to think that Adrien needed someone other than her to talk to, but she couldn't be the one that he came to for everything. She had to accept that, and there was no one better than his best friends to fill that position.

There was an irrational feeling of annoyance that they'd been brought into it, but it was her fault for getting hurt.

Adrien had done his best.

She had to assume that the talk went well because Nino sent a one word apology to her that evening.

Alya's was two sentences, saying she'd been insensitive.

Adrien admitted he'd bawled his eyes out and was crying too hard for them to understand him in the beginning.

"But it worked," he insisted with a laugh, ears tinged pink from his lingering embarrassment. "They still don't really get it, but they don't think we're crazy—that's a good sign, right?"

"If you say so," she replied, dubious.

She didn't hear from Alya for almost three days before an invitation came to go round to her house.

It was normal for them to watch anything horror or crime-related together, as Adrien and Nino weren't interested in them, but it was the first invitation since she'd been wounded and unconscious.

Before she could reply, Alya sent another message saying she'd try and not be too weird.

She smiled.

It was Alya that answered the door.

Alya stood there, holding onto the door, lips parted but no words coming out as she stared at Marinette in surprise, clearly finding it hard to come to terms that she'd actually come over.

"I did say I was coming," Marinette said as her greeting, standing awkwardly on the porch with her hands fiddling with the strap of her bag she had over her chest. "I can go?"

"No, no!" Alya exclaimed, snapping out of it and throwing the door open with more force than necessary, stepping to the side to let her past. "Come in, I was just—I was surprised, that's all."

"Why?" she asked, standing at the bottom of the stairs until Alya had shut the door, not wanting to be the first to go up.

The best way to describe how Alya was acting was skittish.

Alya couldn't look her in the eyes too long, kept fidgeting, constantly talking, and filling in the silence with remarks that were sometimes not even the topic that they'd been on. As soon as they'd gotten into Alya's room, a film had been switched on, no decision made about what to watch, and there was a fair distance between them where they sat, rather than being close enough to touch.

Marinette didn't know whether to be hurt or not.

Alya gnawed on her nails, keeping her eyes on the screen.

The invitation had been an attempt to reach out, surely to prove their friendship was okay, but Alya's nervous reactions were saying something else.

And when Alya shuffled for the third time in less than a minute, Marinette paused the film.

"What is it?" she bluntly asked.

Alya averted her gaze, adjusting her spectacles. "What?"

"You clearly want to say something," she replied. "And you're being weird about me. I told you, if you want me to go, just say."

"I don't want you to go!" Alya exclaimed without hesitation, finally looking her in the eyes. "It's not—I just don't know how to be around you."

She swallowed. "I haven't changed."

"No," Alya agreed. "But you—you're different."

Why was she even there?

Getting Adrien to trust her and understand the danger he was in had been a good decision—he'd matured, come to terms with what needed to happen, and their relationship had changed for the better.

Alya wasn't important.

They wouldn't be attending the same school any more, and there was no reason that they had to see each other. Alya was a throwaway, someone that wasn't supposed to be factored in her life—

Alya cared about her.

And, somehow, Marinette had started to care about her, too.

It wasn't that fierce and all-consuming urge that she got with Adrien. She wasn't going to adjust her lifestyle and dedicate all her time to making sure that Alya was okay; rather, she'd text her a few times during the week, seeing what she was up to.

Alya had no reason to want to be her friend.

"Am I?" she asked.

Alya's gaze fell down to her lap where she was fiddling with her hands. "It's—this is insane, isn't it? I know there were some weird rumours about you, but I never thought it would be something like _this_."

"It won't be a part of your life," Marinette pointed out, not talking as quietly as Alya was. "It just means you'll understand why Adrien has to leave abruptly sometimes. If you want to forget it, you can."

Alya frowned. "How am I supposed to forget about this?"

"You will, eventually," she said. "Maybe in a few years—maybe decades, even—there'll come a time when you wonder if you made it all up."

Alya fidgeted, looking her in the eyes. "Why didn't you tell me?"

Marinette almost laughed. "Why would I?"

"It—" Alya breathed out audibly. "I thought you were being abused."

"I realised that, yes," she replied with a shrug of her shoulders. "But you wouldn't listen to me when I said otherwise." Then, when she saw how Alya was looking at her with that frown again, she added on, "What? Did you expect me to say I'm busy fighting demons, _not_ my grandfather?"

Alya sighed. "I guess not."

"I did say sparring eventually, didn't I?" she pointed out.

"It's just—" Alya cut herself off with a frustrated noise, pushing her curly hair away from her face. "You're so _small_, Marinette. How am I supposed to be okay with you—you being out there fighting?"

She bluntly replied, "It's not your place to."

"I care about you," Alya insisted, crossing her arms.

"And I never asked you to," Marinette said. And before Alya could reply to that, she stated, "As much as I like you, your opinion isn't going to change anything. I never planned on filling you and Nino in on what was happening—but now that you know, you need to realise that it doesn't actually matter."

Alya's brow furrowed. "It doesn't matter?"

"No," she confirmed, not trying to soften her words for Alya's feelings. She'd only been careful in the past to avoid her secrets getting out. "I'm still going to do everything I was before."

The response she got to that was, "Why?"

"Why what?" Marinette asked.

"Why do it at all?" Alya questioned, genuine confusion seeping into her tone. "It—why is it _you_? You're... you're giving up the rest of your life for this, aren't you?"

Marinette frowned. "I'm not giving anything up."

"You'd never had a birthday party until last week," Alya retorted. "You'd never even been to anyone else's until Adrien's. And there's—there's so _many_ things you haven't done!"

"I don't care," she said.

Because she didn't, not really. As new and wonderful as those experiences had been, growing up with them would've meant that her life wouldn't be the same at all. There had been times she'd wished that everything was different, when she was curled up and trying to hide from the cold wind that was making her shiver, but it was because of that that she was there.

It had started with Nice Lady.

Sometimes, she wondered whether the woman had ever come back.

Alya's expression crumbled. "You don't care?"

"They're not important to me," Marinette told her.

"How—how can you be so... callous about this?" Alya asked, her voice but a whisper. "About yourself?"

Because it didn't matter, did it?

Adrien did.

"You think that I'm some deprived kid," she started, smile not reaching her eyes as she gestured between them. "But you need to realise that that was my choice. You can't take that away from me."

"I'm not trying to!" Alya said, surely louder than intended as she almost flinched, shoulders slumping with a sigh. "I'm just—I want to understand, but I really don't get it, Marinette. You're so... detached about all of this."

"Have you ever wondered why I always wear baggy clothes?" she asked.

Alya blinked. "What?"

"You saw it before, right?" Marinette put her hand over her waist, feeling the outline of her weapon underneath her clothes. "You're the one that changed me, weren't you?"

Alya's gaze slid down to where she was touching. "You have it on you?"

"I always do," she confirmed. "We're different, you and I. You worry about homework, and I worry about Adrien getting kidnapped when he's outside."

With those words, Alya really did flinch. "That really happened?"

He'd told her, then. "Yes."

Alya's voice cracked as she asked, "All of it—it really happened?"

Adrien had simply said that he'd told them all that they needed to know.

And in that moment, Marinette was still convinced that they didn't need to, not when Nino's reaction was surely as emotional as his girlfriend's. It wasn't everyday that they'd find out their friend had a target on his head that would only end up in death.

"I don't know what you want me to say," she remarked, biting the inside of her cheek.

"Can you—" Alya took in a sharp breath. "Can you tell me about you?"

Marinette hesitated. "Me?"

"What don't I know?" Alya questioned, adjusting how she was sitting so her legs were crossed. "Friends are supposed to share things, right?"

She didn't know how to respond to that. "I guess."

"Well, you know more about me," Alya said, smile looking a bit more sincere than before. "We should change that."

-x-

A new school meant a new routine.

Adrien's parents had gotten to know her more—with his father stiffly greeting her each time, saying that she needed to eat more whenever she gently rejected the invitation to stay for dinner—so it was a surprise when Adrien's father extended the offer to drop her off in the mornings.

His parents would never let him walk there in the morning, so it would be the two of them walking home.

They were still going on the lie that she lived nearby. Marinette turned up at his doorstop, dressed in her an oversized hoodie that hid her figure since they didn't have to wear a uniform any more, and patiently waited after ringing the bell.

Adrien's hair was a mess.

He was running his fingers through it as he stumbled out, sleepiness clear in his expression. "Morning."

His outfit was similar to hers. The only difference was that she had rips in her jeans.

"We match," she stated, gesturing to her outfit first. "I almost think you planned this."

Adrien laughed. "We're going to be _that_ couple."

Adrien's father came out after that, offering Marinette a quiet greeting as they got into the car. There wasn't much conversation, mostly due to Adrien being too sleepy to reply with more than one sentence, so quiet music filled in the silence.

It wasn't awkward.

"I'll see you tomorrow, Marinette," Adrien's father said as his good-bye. "Have a good day, you two."

As they stood outside the entrance, with Adrien pulling out his phone to open the e-mail they'd received about where they needed to be, he used his free hand to hold hers.

Marinette wasn't that nervous.

It was just strange that she'd made it so far when she hadn't had a formal education until she was a teenager. The forged documents were of good quality to get her that far.

Unlike before, they wouldn't be jumping between different classes with other students. It was a set class for the next two years with the teachers changing instead, and the only time they had to change room was for when computers were needed.

Adrien had pulled her to sit beside him without hesitation. There wasn't anyone who looked familiar in there with them, and even after introductions—where they had to awkwardly state their name and which school they'd come from before—she didn't recognise anyone.

Unlike her, Adrien was a social butterfly. He chattered to anyone that came near to him, while Marinette kept to herself, only being dragged into conversations when Adrien nudged her for his attention.

She wasn't upset by it.

The first week of classes were an introduction, the teachers getting to know them, and a time for awkward attempts at conversations with the rest of their class-mates.

While Marinette wasn't interested in befriending anyone, she wasn't going to hold Adrien back.

"You can go eat lunch with them, if you want," she pointed out when a group had gone to inspect the dining hall after inviting him. "I might check out the library."

He pulled a face at that. "So early?"

"Knowledge is power, right?" she quipped.

"Check out what food they have for sale with me first," Adrien suggested. "It'll be good to know if we have to bring in our own in the future, right?"

He had his food for the day stashed away in his bag, but she was never one to deny him things. With a dramatic sigh, Marinette allowed him to tug her down the hallway, passing through a few buildings that they wouldn't have to go in for their own classes, taking in their surroundings and trying to become more familiar with them.

While their course only lasted two years, some of the others lasted for longer, so the ages of students varied. There were a few in their class that were some years older—a clear reason that they'd had to give their ages with their introductions.

The food wasn't very enticing.

Marinette was going to continue bringing in leftovers or food that she'd bought from a nearby store the night before. Although she'd taken cooking classes, Chloé's kitchen was mostly untouched, and Marinette didn't feel like dabbling in trying to cook something that wasn't assigned any time soon.

Adrien was the chef of the two of them with his wonky cakes.

When they were spotted by some of their new class-mates that were sat down at a table, an offer to join them was extended.

"A few minutes?" Adrien asked her. "You can go and check out the library after."

And so, she did sit down, offering a nod of acknowledgement to those that greeted her. It was Adrien that kept up the conversation, happily talking to them and introducing himself again to make sure they remembered him.

When a small amount of time had passed, Adrien kissed her cheek before she stood up to leave.

Her chest felt warm.

It wasn't a problem that she wasn't social.

Although she kept to herself, she spoke to her class-mates if she had to. Her notes weren't filled with doodles in the margins like Adrien's were, though he was better with numbers than she was.

Alya sent her a text, lamenting that she missed the two of them.

A routine was starting to happen again. With the lifts from Adrien's father in the morning, walking home together, and Adrien proclaiming that they should get coffee together on their one half-day in the middle of the week.

They would do their homework together in the evenings.

Adrien's mother kept asking Adrien to ask her over for dinner.

Marinette wasn't planning on accepting that any time soon.

Nino was texting her, but he was trying to pretend like nothing had happened. All his demon-related questions were surely aimed at Adrien, while with her, he was carrying on their last conversation about music, sending each other songs that they thought the other would like.

Alya was another matter.

She was as persistent about getting to know her as she'd been in the beginning, even though they weren't attending the same school any more. Since Alya couldn't corner her and ask questions in person, she was texting her throughout the day, in the evenings when she was bored from her homework and complained about it before asking a random question that came out of nowhere.

Marinette didn't find her annoying.

Alya had wormed her way into her life in an endearing way—it just took a while to realise that she actually cared about her, and that Alya's intentions had never been bad.

So when Alya asked if her healing powers applied to her period, she had to laugh at just how blunt Alya could be at times.

It was like Adrien all over, but without the tears.

At least, she hoped that was the case.

"Nino's been sending me blog posts and asking if they're true," Adrien revealed, swinging their linked hands between them with enthusiasm. "Like, he's looking through some really weird stuff, you know? I'm just worried about what's going to pop up in his search history."

She laughed. "As long as he doesn't join a cult, I think he'll be fine."

"What if one offers him more information?" he mused. "He'd be interested. He's an idiot."

"Coming from you?"

"That's rude!" Adrien exclaimed, putting his free hand over his heart as he gasped. "You're supposed to love me."

With a grin, Marinette replied, "I love you for your faults."

"Somehow, that doesn't sound like a compliment," he muttered, looking at her through narrowed eyes. "Are you sure about that?"

She tilted her head curiously. "Sure that I love you?"

"Let's forget about that before you start proclaiming that your life is mine," Adrien said, shaking his head. "Those sort of things belong in theatre."

She snorted. "Are you calling me theatrical?"

"Dramatic is a good word for it," he replied.

"Is it?" Marinette questioned. "Because I'm pretty sure people would describe you as that, not me."

"That's because they don't know you like I do," Adrien pointed out, lifting up their joined hands to press a kiss to her knuckles. "You're calm in the weirdest of situations, yes? Like an actor would be."

Raising her eyebrows, she said, "That... doesn't make sense."

"If I want to pretend that one part of my life is part of a play, let me," he replied with a laugh, their hands falling back down between them. "When I dream of it, it'll be a big stage production. Maybe I'll give you some actual clothes."

She almost rolled her eyes. "There's nothing wrong with my clothes."

"You're terribly dull," he remarked.

"You sound like Chloé," Marinette said, laughter spilling out of her from the thought. "You—you're the one that wears colours that don't even match."

"At least I wear colours," he teased.

She sniffed. "I have a pink shirt."

"And it looks wonderful on you," he assured her, thumb tracing patterns on the back of her hand. "It really brings out your eyes—which are usually the only bit of colour about you. I swear, you'd dye your hair black if it wasn't naturally like that."

Gently, she jabbed him with her elbow. "I feel like you're attacking me right now."

"You're the one that just hit me!" he squawked.

She looked him in the eye. "Did I?"

"You did," he insisted, taking a step to the side so their arms were outstretched, looking comical as he continued to hold her hand in the air. "I now have to be this far apart from you to feel safe."

"I could push you in the road," she threatened.

His eyes crinkled at the corners from his smile. "You wouldn't."

Marinette made a disapproving noise. "Are you goading me?"

"Your life goal is to keep me happy and well, there's no way you're going to maim me," he stated.

"Well." She let his hand drop, putting hers in the pocket of her hoodie instead. "I think if you had broken legs, you'd be less likely to get into trouble, right? You can't go scampering off in flip-flops if you're in a wheelchair."

"You might have a point," he begrudgingly agreed. "But my happiness is top priority, isn't it?"

She hummed. "Is it?"

"Oh, you're definitely hurting my feelings now," he accused, his laughter contradicting his words. "Are you trying to make me cry?"

"It has been a while," Marinette said.

He shook his head. "You just want to wipe my tears."

"Are we at that stage of our relationship?"

"We're the ones that get to decide, remember?" Adrien replied. "If I say we're at that level, we are."

"You're the one making the rules, are you?" she questioned, shaking her head in mock disagreement. "I don't remember that being a thing."

His dimples showed when he smiled. "But I've got you wrapped around my little finger, haven't I?"

There was so many things she wanted to say to him, but trying to find the right words was hard. She could never quite describe how she felt, how much she wanted to protect and shield him from harm—

When she was with him, she felt like a better person.

Adrien was pure, in more than one meaning. His smile was bright and showed what he was feeling, his actions were kind and selfless for the most part, and the way he didn't judge others was a shining example of why she liked him so much.

He was everything she wanted to be but couldn't.

"Yeah," she murmured, gently taking his hand in hers. "You do."

The sound of his soft laughter made her smile.

-x-

While Adrien made her want to be good—to be on the receiving end of his sweet smile as he said that she'd done something remarkable—it was a rare thing in reality.

Marinette's morals were different to his.

The time she spent with Chloé skewed it more.

Violence was welcomed. Blood and gore were natural at that point, not something her stomach protested to seeing, and it was only feeling her own pain that made her nauseated.

The sight of a severed head didn't fill her with chills.

Nor when Chloé crouched beside her, tearing apart the ribcage of the demon they'd found, squeezing the very life from their actual heart before finding the others. And as the body faded to ashes, becoming damp with blood and settling grotesquely on the ground, Marinette was more concerned with wiping her sword off on her hoodie.

Black clothing had advantages, even if Adrien complimented the rare colour on her.

It was a trade off she didn't indulge in often.

Chloé hadn't been the one to taint her—that wasn't the case, unlike what Alya had started to think when she'd heard that her best friend wasn't human.

Was it strange to classify Chloé as that?

But when she looked to Chloé to see the blood-stained fingers, the skimpy clothing that looked highly inappropriate on her teenaged body, she didn't feel terror; rather, she was pleased to see that she was happy and enjoying herself.

Chloe loved violence.

And Marinette—

Marinette liked it, too.

When an elderly woman had fallen over on their route home, Adrien had rushed forward to help her. He'd stayed and collected her belongings that had fallen from her bag, making sure that she was okay and kept asking if there was anyone that she wanted to call, all the while Marinette had stood by a nearby wall, watching.

She had no urge to help.

If someone got hurt accidentally because of her actions, she didn't feel bad.

The previous week, someone had walked past and seen her covered in blood. The demon had died before they'd appeared, any evidence of a body disappearing with them, but she couldn't allow them to report a bloodied teenager to the police.

There was also the matter of her still holding her sword, too.

So, Marinette had used her bandalore to knock them out.

They were still breathing, which was a good sign.

She hadn't told Adrien.

Although she knew that he'd be upset that it had to happen—like it had in the public toilet when he was present before—she didn't want to see the disappointed look on his face.

She didn't want to disappoint him in general.

The softness in his expression when he looked at her, even when they were in class and should've been paying attention to the teacher, was something that she didn't want to lose.

With Adrien, she liked to think that she was good.

Chloé was the opposite, but it felt just as empowering.

When they hunted together, the sarcastic quips that came from Chloé as Marinette had a demon struggling in her hold made her confidence soar.

She'd learned more from Chloé than she would've ever hoped to from Fu. Although it took some time to pry the information sometimes, Chloé had a plethora of facts that were either useless or handy.

It was with Chloé that she succeeded in hitting a demon in the nose with her bandalore and killing them on impact.

And as she smiled in happiness that it had finally _worked_, Chloé remarked, "That was smooth, kid."

It would've been horrifying to anyone else, wouldn't it?

But Chloé admired the work, proceeded to ask how many times she'd attempted before it succeeded.

It turned out all she needed to do was swing the bandalore when it was still in her hand a few times before releasing it. Although it didn't feel any different to her, the impact had more strength than without the spins.

Magical weapons didn't make any sense.

That was made obvious when Chloé came back with her newly made sword.

As agreed upon, Marinette gave her money for it.

Marinette had been in her bedroom, writing an essay while Adrien was doing the same, the two of them texting and comparing information, when Chloé called out her name as a way of greeting.

When she walked out into the hallway, turning on the light to be able to see better, Chloé was standing by the front door with shopping bags by her feet, grinning widely.

Suspicious, she asked, "What's up?"

Instead of answering, Chloé reached into the tallest bag—thicker, one that wasn't plastic—and dramatically pulled out what looked to be a sword tucked into a leather scabbard. And as the cover was dropped onto the floor, revealing a blade that was over double the size of her own, Chloé decided to hold out her free arm straight in front of her.

Marinette didn't get the chance to say anything.

Holding the handle, Chloé brought the blade down onto her exposed arm with enough force that her hair moved from the hit.

Her breath caught in her throat.

There was no injury.

And as she walked closer, eyes wide and incredulous, she saw that there was no damage to Chloé's skin whatsoever.

"Useless, remember?" Chloé quipped.

It wasn't as bad as the heart-feeling incident, but that didn't make it any better.

Marinette breathed out noisily. "I'm going to have a fucking heart attack someday."

Chloé snorted. "Don't be a pussy."

"So this—this is a demon weapon?" she asked, stepping closer to peer at it.

There wasn't anything special about it. Although it was bigger than her own, the handle didn't have any intricate design, no gold accents or anything expensive that she would've expected from Chloé, and there were no markings on the actual sword itself.

The sheath was plain leather, nothing written on it.

It didn't look other-worldly.

"Yeah," Chloé confirmed, tossing it in the air before catching it by the blade, completely unharmed from the throw, and holding the handle out for Marinette to take. "How does it feel to you?"

Curious, she wrapped her hand around the handle.

It was heavy.

Well, that wasn't quite right. Her own blade felt effortless, weightless in a way that her child body had been able to wield it without trouble—but she wouldn't have been able to do the same with Chloé's.

"Not like mine," she said.

"Get it out and see," Chloé demanded. "I want to feel it again."

She held out the blade for her to take back first.

There wasn't much hesitance about getting it out. Marinette reached under her shirt, ignoring the waggle of Chloé's eyebrows—since turning sixteen, those type of jokes had appeared more often—and pulled out her own blade.

The extra inch was there, as always.

Chloé tapped her a finger from her non-dominant hand against the blade, a pebble of blood appearing within an instant.

Marinette passed it over to her.

With the two blades in her hand—different sizes, the only similarity how simple in design they were—Chloé turned them over and inspected them, adjusting her grip and testing the weights of them. "They definitely feel similar."

"No," she denied.

"To _me_ they do," Chloé retorted. "What's so different to you?"

"Mine's weightless," Marinette pointed out. "I don't—it's not something I really feel? It does things without me realising it, like getting longer when I get it out or cutting through anything."

Chloé squinted. "Longer?"

She lifted her shirt up, gesturing for Chloé to hold the blade against the sheath to measure the difference.

"Let me try," Chloé said, but it was more of a demand.

As with Adrien, Chloé's touch couldn't get the sword to fit in properly. Once Marinette had tucked it away, the handle slipping in with ease and filling up the leather perfectly, Chloé pulling the blade out proved that she was incapable of having the same result.

Chloé's own blade didn't do that.

It didn't for Marinette either.

And yet, Chloé insisted that it felt the same to her; that instead of the weight, it was that same sense of _something_ being there, the very way that she was able to look at someone else and realise that they were a demon.

It was a sense of knowing.

Marinette couldn't argue with that.

She wished that she could know things so strongly, to understand herself without doubt.

The buzzing—but not _really_ buzzing, as there wasn't really a sound—was still present. It wasn't as irritating as before, not when she'd been dealing with it for months by that point, but that didn't mean she'd come to terms with it.

Adrien was still suggesting that she see a doctor about it.

Marinette didn't know what would happen if they took blood samples from her.

She didn't know how different she was, wasn't sure if anything would show up and reveal her to be unlike others.

The way she could wield the bandalore and sword like no one else should've been a warning sign. Marinette had selfishly guarded them, not wanting to share—

But as two others had touched the blade, she refused for that to happen with the bandalore.

She had a backup sword, but that was it.

Marinette was aware that she was selfish.

When her new class-mates were readily talking to Adrien, greeting him in the mornings and her as an afterthought, she didn't have that all-consuming feeling of jealousy. She wasn't upset when he spent time with other people, not when he held her hand so gently and always pressed soft kisses to her skin whenever they saw each other.

Jealousy had never really been a thing for her.

Adrien deserved good things; if friends made him laugh, she was happy for him.

When she'd watched him from afar, she'd never been fuming at how close Alya and Nino were to him. She was grateful that they were there, that they'd stuck by his side for years and been such loyal friends, so she had to be open to new people being capable of the same thing.

Without fail, whenever an invitation was extended to him, Adrien would invite her along. Whether it was lunch, to study in the library, or to meet up at the weekend to get to know each other—Adrien would ask for her to come every time, even if it was for a few minutes before she'd be lurking nearby to make sure that he was okay.

Their new school was more updated than the other one; students were older, not starting from pre-teens and up, so it meant that more security cameras were installed.

She could trust that nothing would happen to him there.

The chance of a demon being idiotic enough to murder him in public within a _school_ was low.

Adrien wasn't shy about admitting they were dating whenever anyone asked.

Marinette kept her responses to a minimum.

The majority of their class-mates seemed nice enough, but she was indifferent to them.

And yet, she'd agreed to visit one guy's house because his parents were out. There was the promise of alcohol, sofas to sleep on if they wanted to stay over instead of stumbling home, and it sounded like her worst nightmare.

Alya wasn't sympathetic.

She snorted. "Yeah, have fun with that."

Marinette breathed out loudly. "What am I even supposed to do?"

"Socialise, unfortunately," Alya told her. "But that's not really your strong suit."

She grumbled, "Aren't you supposed to hype me up? You're my friend."

"I'm your friend, so I'm telling you the truth," Alya replied. "You hate everyone but us."

She sniffed. "I don't _hate_ them."

"You barely spoke two words to be for an entire year before I pestered you," Alya countered.

"Maybe you were boring," she said, deadpan.

"Me," Alya repeated, holding back laughter. "Yes, I'm the boring one of us two."

Adrien was given permission to go to their class-mate's home after he said that she was going. His parents said that it was fine as long as he came home before midnight.

He'd blurted out that Marinette's grandfather was giving them a lift there and back.

Somehow, that lie was still being believed.

"I don't get why we're doing this," Marinette muttered, dragging her feet as they walked down the road.

Adrien's attention was on his phone where he had a map open, directing them in the right direction to the address they'd been given. "It's good to bond with your class-mates."

"Sure, when we're in class," she retorted. "But this sounds horrible."

"It can't be worse than that nightclub you go to," he pointed out. "That's filled with drunk people, right?"

"That I _steal_ from," she replied. "But I can't exactly do that now, can I?"

He pulled a face.

Marinette perked up. "Can I?"

"No!" Adrien exclaimed with a laugh. "You can't steal from people we're going to see almost everyday for two years. They'd start to get suspicious, you know?"

She slumped her shoulders in disappointment. "Boring."

"I'm sorry you can only get enjoyment from crime," he teased, directing them down another street. "I'm trying to keep you out of trouble. I'm your moral compass now."

Amused, she asked, "Oh, are you?"

"Yes." He nodded. "That means you have to ask me before you do anything. I need to tell you whether that's going to get you into Heaven or not."

"Hell's dead," she reminded him. "I think the only bet is for me to get up there."

"Surely they can't let everyone in," he mused.

She shrugged. "It's a mystery. Not like I can flag down an angel and ask them."

"They want to kill me, too, right?" His tone was casual, not at all like they were discussing his possible murder. "So I'm not getting in."

With a pointed look, she replied, "I'm not letting you die."

"Theoretically," Adrien comprised. "What do you think would happen?"

"I honestly have no idea," she admitted. "I don't even know how demons are—born? Is that the right word? Chloé won't give me any clues, and I don't even want to get into all those theory blogs Nino is looking at."

"I wouldn't want to be a demon," he confessed, taking her hand gently into his. "It seems... lonely? And living forever surely gets dull after a while."

She frowned. "You're not dying."

"I have to die someday," Adrien said, linking his fingers through hers. "That's the way of life. Eventually, you'll be dramatically weeping over my gravestone—"

"You're assuming you're going to die first?" she questioned.

"Well, you've got the weird healing thing going on," he answered with a shrug. "If you can heal a hangover, I think you might just avoid all the other illnesses. I mean, when was the last time you had a cold?"

She blinked.

"You don't sniffle when it's cold," Adrien pointed out.

"You don't know that," she countered, starting to walk slower as they arrived at their desired street. It was relatively nice, the houses large with expensive cars out front, and the well-cared for lawns and plans throughout the street showed the level of wealth the occupants had. "I've been sick before. I'm not, like, suddenly immune from it all."

He raised his eyebrows. "Yeah, but you haven't gotten ill since the whole healing thing kicked in, have you?"

She pursed her lips.

His smile showed his dimples. "I'm right."

"No."

With a laugh, he exclaimed, "I _am_!"

They arrived at a bungalow.

Music was pouring out, able to be heard from the curb, and all the windows were lit up with lights. She could see people moving around inside, laughter and loud talking becoming obvious as they approached the porch.

Adrien squeezed her hand. "Do we ring the bell?"

"I don't know," she replied, already wanting to leave. "You sure I can't steal from anyone?"

He wrinkled his nose. "The only thing you're stealing is my heart."

Marinette shoved him lightly. "That's not even funny."

Through his laughter, he answered back, "You can't push away my affections!"

She made a point of crossing her arms and taking a step away from him.

"Such mixed signals," he proclaimed, sniffing dramatically. "You're really a criminal, aren't you?"

It was as she raised her middle finger that the door opened.

Someone she didn't recognise came out, unlit cigarette in his mouth, offering them a polite smile before stepping out without shoes on to smoke on the porch.

He'd left the door open, so Adrien shrugged and gestured for her to go in first.

She regretted it.

It was loud, the majority of the people there were rowdy, and they kept asking her if she was sure about not drinking. Adrien had accepted a drink when he'd come in, rejecting more than one alcoholic one since he had to go home after, though that didn't stop others from urging him to drink more either.

She felt entirely out of place.

It wasn't like the nightclub where she'd been ignored despite her young looks, and she certainly couldn't entertain herself by stealing wallets when no one was looking.

Nino's was preferable to this one.

People kept introducing themselves over and over. It turned out that other classes had come along, invitations extended to held mingle in their department, and it became apparent that the faces in there would be the ones she'd see in their building.

Adrien did the talking.

She awkwardly stood by his side, sipping her glass of water, either nodding or shaking her head when questions were sent her way.

By the end of it, Adrien had more phone numbers in his phone, while she felt tired from all the interaction.

"Alya was right," she grumbled as they walked outside. There was ash on the floor, standing out against the path up to the porch from the amount of people that had come outside to smoke. "I hate everyone."

Adrien didn't try to deny it. "Yeah, you do."

She wasn't offended.

"Thanks for coming," Adrien said, putting his hands in his pockets and retain some heat. "It was fun with you there glowering at people. You're like the devil on my shoulder urging me to do bad things."

She snorted. "What bad things?"

He winked. "Bad things to you?"

"I'll shove you again," she threatened.

He threw his head back and laughed.

-x-

While they may not have been attending the same school any more, Alya and Nino insisted that they meet up at the weekends.

With Adrien's seventeenth birthday soon, his parents had extended his curfew in the evenings. He was allowed out more often than not on the condition that he give the address of where he was going and list the people that would be there.

To Marinette's surprise, it seemed if he mentioned that he was going somewhere with her, they were more lenient.

She was still rejecting dinner invitations when they were offered during the morning rides or when she was studying in the living room with Adrien.

For some reason, his parents _liked_ her.

It didn't make much sense.

When Alya mentioned that her parents were fond of her, too, that was when she had to bring it up.

"I don't get it," Marinette bluntly said. "I barely even talk to them."

"Yeah, but you're polite," Alya replied.

She almost laughed at that. "What?"

"You look really small," Alya stated, gesturing towards her jumper that she'd had to roll the sleeves up of. "And you're really quiet. It makes them think you're shy, not suspect that you're actually full of hate and want to stab everyone that you meet."

Marinette narrowed her eyes. "Not everyone."

"Almost everyone." Alya held her hands up in a sign of surrender. "Other than us, of course."

"You're practically giving yourself an award for being my friend at this point," she dryly remarked.

"I should." Alya beamed. "It took a lot of hard work and persistence. But now look at us! Eating ice cream in my room and gossiping like old ladies."

With a frown, she replied, "We are not gossiping."

"We are," was the response to that. "About you."

Marinette scoffed.

"There, there." Alya reached out, patting her thigh in a way that was anything but comforting. "At least I'm not talking about you behind your back, right?"

Alya had relaxed around her.

The next time they were alone in her room, the conversation took a while to flow, but it was a good sign that Alya wasn't fidgeting as much. Although there was a lot unsaid, the way Alya smiled and beckoned for her to come forward and see something on her phone showed that she was trying to get over it, to come to terms with the knowledge and be friends again.

However, it meant that when the four of them met up and visited a café, it wasn't Marinette that was the paranoid one.

Nino sipped his milkshake, blatantly staring at anyone that sat near them.

Alya wasn't any better. She had looked at the cashier suspiciously when Adrien was giving his order, turning to Marinette to ask whether she thought they were being suspicious.

They cared, that was what was important.

There wasn't any way that they'd be able to identify a demon on demand. They were even less experienced than Adrien, and it was only because he'd been stalked for a while with his mother that he'd noticed in the first place.

So, when they suggested they could go to the cinema next week, Marinette had to shake her head at that.

She didn't know if that employee had returned.

And it turned out that Adrien hadn't told them that bit.

Nino was torn between being horrified that Adrien had been used as bait, or amused that he'd cheated on Marinette by going on a date right in front of her.

As with Adrien, humour was his go-to to cover his feelings.

It made sense why they got along so well.

The decision was made to meet up at houses for the foreseeable future. Adrien had tried to protest, to say that he was safe with her there, but Alya and Nino weren't listening to him.

They were sweet and stubborn in their care for him.

When Marinette had to cancel to say that she couldn't make it at the weekend, that meant that they gathered at Adrien's instead, sending her picture proof of them sitting in his bedroom.

Unlike when it was just the two of them alone, when they'd usually sit closely on the sofa, the large beanbag had been dragged over for Adrien to collapse onto.

She got a picture of him face down on it.

"You're so social lately," Chloé complained, slapping the phone out of her hands and demanding attention. "Are you forgetting you're supposed to be my lapdog?"

She raised her eyebrows. "Am I?"

"You owe me your life," was the prim reply to that, emphasised with a toss of blonde hair over her shoulder. "That means you have to listen to me."

With a sigh, she asked, "What do you even want?"

Chloé grinned.

They broke into someone's house.

There was no alarm system. A window was left open at the back—surely from where the afternoons were still hot, while the evenings grew chilly when the sun was gone—and Marinette was the only to climb through before going to the back door to open it for Chloé.

The demon didn't wake up before she plunged her sword through the first heart, stabbing it through into the mattress, while Chloé took care of the other sleeping to the side.

And yet, when Chloé came to finish off the demon, crushing the second heart and reducing them to ash with the leftover blood that was seeping into the sheets, the other body didn't disappear.

It shouldn't have been as surprising as it was, but it was for a completely different than Adrien would've wanted her to have.

She wasn't horrified that they'd killed a human.

Rather, she'd never considered that a demon could've been in a relationship. She knew that some posed as children, growing up and restarting life when they were bored with being an adult or needed to outrun a stigma attached to their face, yet it had never occurred to her that a relationship with what was essentially another species was possible.

Chloé laughed in her face.

"You've never had anyone over!" Marinette exclaimed, face warm from embarrassment.

The laughter continued. "And what? You thought I'd be the be-all and end-all of demon behaviours?"

She crossed her arms, mortified at the reaction. "Why was I supposed to think otherwise? I don't know any demons but you."

"For a good reason," Chloé mused. "Demons are supposed to be bad and all, but approaching a kid is fucking gross."

"You approached me."

"No." Chloé went as far as to waggle her finger. "I saw your clumsy murder and thought that you're someone fitting of becoming my protégé."

She snorted. "You decided that last month."

"Time flies by so fast," Chloé remarked, adjusting the strap of her flimsy shirt. "What are you now? Fifteen?"

With a sigh, she corrected, "Sixteen."

Chloé squinted. "Really?"

"We've known each other for a while, dude," Marinette retorted. "I'm not going to stay an infant forever—well, I will in your eyes, I suppose. You are ancient."

"Oh, you're so sweet," Chloé cooed, smiling widely as she opened her arms. "Let me give you a hug."

Taking a step away from her, she said, "Yeah, no."

"I insist," Chloé continued, laughter coming out. "I want to break your bones in an affectionate way. We're at that stage of our relationship, aren't we?"

Marinette laughed loudly. "Why don't you get a boyfriend for that?"

"Not interested in men."

"Oh," she breathed. "You're not?"

"I have some harsh truths to tell you, brat," Chloé stated, reaching out and putting her hand on Marinette's shoulder with more force than necessary. "Life is really, really boring."

And as fingers dug into her through her shirt, Marinette knew she'd have bruises coming. "What?"

"Sex isn't all it's cracked up to be," Chloé began, haughtily raising her chin up. "Humans are only capable of giving you so much, and a demon's as likely to kill you accidentally as they are able to give you an orgasm."

She choked out a laugh. "I don't know what to say to that."

"Make someone bleed before you take them to bed." Chloé cackled. "Preferably in a sexy way—that wouldn't raise too much suspicion about you hurting them."

It was utterly bizarre.

"Are you—" Marinette's laughter came out sounding like a wheeze. "Are you trying to give me a sex talk?"

Chloé cocked her head to the side. "In a way."

Those talks deserved to stay in school, to be considered educational and _not_ by someone who'd told her about fisting after committing a murder.

She gaped at her. "What the fuck?"

"You're that age, aren't you?" Chloé questioned, thoughtful. "I think? It's hard to keep track with you humans. I'm just telling you there's better things out there than some cock."

"I want to forget this ever happened," she uttered, horrified.

Chloé's smile grew smug. "Are you scared?"

"I'm scared for you," Marinette said, still a bit wide-eyed. "You bringing this up at all is making me rethink your mental state."

Chloé snickered.

And with that, Marinette marched towards the bathroom with the proclamation, "I'm going to go drown myself now."

She could still hear Chloé laughing.

It shouldn't have come as such a surprise. Hell was uninhabited, no longer than home for demons, so they had to live up on the surface with humans and observe their way of life.

She had no idea where Hell was located.

Chloé wouldn't tell her.

Demons had the same bodily functions as humans; the beating heart keeping their body going, the urge to eat, surely the need for socialisation. She was still horrified by the thought of demons engaging in intercourse with humans, let alone what the consequences of that could be.

In theory, Chloé wasn't different from demons just for interacting with her; rather, it was the murders that they participated in that set them apart.

Marinette could've spoken to so many demons without realising it.

Questions were spawned from Chloé's sex talk.

The answers she got made sense.

Different species couldn't procreate.

She didn't have to worry about the idea of half-demons out there, or if a human would give birth to a horrifyingly strong baby that turned out to be demon only.

Chloé laughed at her when she asked that.

And she laughed, too. It would've come up sooner if it was possible.

Demons that really were young and inexperienced would've been easier targets. She wouldn't put it past them to be murdered for their power on the spot.

"You're a fucking idiot," Chloé said, some fondness in her tone.

And wasn't it something amazing that she'd somehow managed to befriend a demon so thoroughly? She could relax around Chloé, wasn't terrified of the thought of being vulnerable and sleeping near her, and she knew that she'd never get the friendship she had with her with Alya.

As nice as Alya was, she paled in comparison to Chloé and Adrien.

"I'm going to the bank," Chloé announced, spinning her keys around her finger. "You're not going to ditch me to run off with children, are you?"

She huffed. "I already said no."

"I'm checking I don't have to kill anyone for taking you away from me." Her smile was all teeth. "Order us something to eat, will you?"

It wasn't really a question.

Marinette opened up the application on her phone, checking the nearby restaurants that were open for delivery as Chloé slipped through the front door, slamming it closed with enough force to cause the mirror by the entrance wobble.

The feeling in her head disappeared.

And as quickly as that happened, it came back.

She pressed a finger to her temple, rubbing the skin in an attempt to soothe the barely-there sensation. Adrien had asked her about it more, bringing up an online thesaurus and trying to use fancy words to describe it, saying that just having a feeling wasn't good enough.

The front door slammed open.

The only reason the wall wasn't damaged was because the doorknob had a cushion on the other side to prevent it for that very reason.

Unlike Marinette, Chloé paid others to fix anything she damaged. Chloé had hired a plumber to fix the tap because she'd accidentally broken it the previous week, all without warning Marinette beforehand.

She'd stood there awkwardly when an unknown man had knocked on the door, asking if he had the right address.

Chloé's heels were audible as she walked into her bedroom, probably to grab something that she'd forgotten, before leaving just as dramatically again.

It wasn't a minute later that the buzzing stopped.

There should've been a lot of things she questioned—whether she was eating enough vegetables, or if she'd been wrong to take that last wallet when it had fallen out of someone's bag on the bus—but she tended to go with what was happening, accepting it for what it was.

She hadn't noticed her blade changed length when she was the one wielding it.

And when Chloé came back close to an hour later, the feeling had returned before her.

Wasn't that _odd_?

It had been on-and-off with no logical reason attached—

But she'd never considered that an option, had she?

Demons were a part of life for her, an everyday feature that she'd become accustomed to that she'd accepted them as normal for her.

There was always something about her that had to be odd.

She didn't bring it up.

When she and Chloé ate the food that was delivered, using the disposable cutlery that came with it, she never brought the subject up.

In the morning, when she left to meet Adrien to go to school, the feeling left when she'd crossed the street away from where Chloé lived.

She took a step back in that direction.

The feeling returned.

Feeling nauseated, she stepped back onto the curb, inching further away until the feeling faded, becoming a distant memory, no longer present in her head.

She held her breath as she confirmed her suspicions with a step forward.

There was no denying it.

She ran her fingers through her hair, gripping at the roots and pulling, feeling the pain in her scalp and she tried to find a sense of stability, to understand what was happening.

It shouldn't have been such a shock.

There was never anything normal about her, was there?

Adrien would get excited at finding a new comic that he liked translated online, and Marinette—

Marinette liked the powerful feeling of thrusting her sword through someone's chest.

Her footsteps felt heavy as she walked.

-x-

Marinette wondered what else she was oblivious to.

She knew that she focused on one thing, tending to prioritise Adrien and neglected herself in the process.

With the knowledge of what that feeling in her head meant, she became as paranoid as Alya and Nino when they were out with Adrien.

The sense was there, a strange feeling that something was amiss around her, and she'd figured out that the distance that a demon needed to be away from not to trigger it was roughly as wide as half of her new school.

It was so large that she wouldn't be able to tell if they were in front of her.

But it was progress, wasn't it?

The sudden knowledge that she knew, somehow, that a demon was nearby put it into perspective how many were in the city. Adrien's family lived in the capital of the country, surrounded by crowds and designer stores, a hot-spot for activity and tourists.

It was a prime location for humans and demons alike, unlike Aloys in the countryside.

Marinette had questions about human hunters, but she'd never ran into any other than Fu. She didn't know if they developed the sense she had after killing so many demons, and she knew that it was pointless asking.

It was unlikely that anyone had killed as many as she had.

Aloys had kept the weapons hidden, stashed away and out of sight, and he'd fought other humans to keep them safe.

She had the handbook of names and addresses from him tucked away in the bottom of her bag that was sitting in her bedroom at Chloé's.

There was a lot of things she wanted to ask him.

Sometimes, she wondered whether he'd approve of what she was doing—because, surely he'd been training her to follow in her footsteps.

She was old enough to realise that any other adult that found her would've called the police.

Adrien's input on her sudden realisation wasn't helpful.

"Marinette," he said, putting his hands on her shoulders. "I love you, but I need you to understand that nothing about you makes any sense."

She'd laughed in agreement to that.

He was the only one she trusted to tell.

Alya and Nino were too new. They weren't fully exposed to how cold and disconnected she could be when talking about what she did, and she wasn't going to reveal anything extra to them when it wouldn't benefit her.

Adrien listened.

He was someone that offered comfort. Although his advice was often filled with half-hearted jokes to try and ease the tension, there was no one else she would've gone to when she wanted to hug and mumble about her troubles.

Chloé was the friend she went to to get out her anger.

Adrien didn't have an outlet for his emotions, though.

When one of their new class-mates called her weird, he got offended for her.

Marinette hadn't been present.

She'd been in the library, copying out notes from a book that she didn't want to check out and lug around, when Adrien came in, the downward slant of his eyebrows a clear indication of his mood as he spotted her and marched across the room to sit down.

He vented about what happened.

It wasn't anything new.

A class-mate had asked why he was dating someone so anti-social.

It was sweet that he'd felt the need to defend her, to go as far as to be red in the face by the end of his rant and squeezing his clenched fists with anger for her.

When she said it wasn't the worst thing she'd ever heard about her, it made it worse.

"I'm sorry," he started, emotions making his voice crack. "You don't—you don't deserve to be talked about like that. I'm sorry I never—I'm sorry I never stopped them before."

Curious, she replied, "You didn't know me before."

"And I regret that," Adrien insisted, close enough that she could feel his breath on her face. "I regret all that time we missed together. And to think—"

When he didn't finish that sentence, Marinette prompted him with a quiet, "What?"

He breathed out audibly. "I hate that I thought that about you, too."

It wasn't a surprise.

That had been her aim, after all.

"It's fine." Her smile didn't reach her eyes.

"It's not," Adrien denied, placing one hand gently onto her cheek and brushing his nose lightly against hers. "Maybe I didn't say it to you, but I still thought you were weird."

"Adrien," she murmured. "What do you want me to say?"

She could hear it as he swallowed. "I don't want you to forgive me."

"There's nothing to forgive," Marinette whispered, pressing a chaste kiss to his lips. "That was years ago now."

"You're too good," he quietly told her, looking at her with what could only be described as adoration. "What did I do to deserve you?"

The sound of a chair moving behind them, scraping against the floor, was the reminder she needed to recall that they were in the middle of the library. They weren't in his bedroom, safe and tucked away from prying eyes.

Adrien jumped back, burying his face in his hands with an embarrassed noise escaping him.

She laughed.

His ears turned red.

The feeling wasn't there while they were in class.

Adrien said it could be considered an alarm, maybe another sense that she should name something appropriate, and it was confirmed all the more daily when she was back at Chloé's, the feeling buzzing in her head minutes before Chloé came through the front door.

She wondered whether the distance was longer than demons sensing a human's purity.

Chloé had said that demons could look at each other and just _know—_

That was an apt description of what she was experiencing, wasn't it? It had just developed, perhaps that was why it had been so irritating when it had suddenly appeared without an explanation.

No one had sat her down and told her that it would happen.

Then again, no one had warned her about the advanced healing either.

"It could be because you've killed so many?" Adrien theorised. "I mean, these things—they're both demon traits, right?"

She pulled a face. "I guess."

"Maybe you'll be able to regrow a toe soon," he remarked, curious by the thought of it all. "That would be pretty cool, wouldn't it?"

"Losing the toe in the first place wouldn't," she muttered.

"We'll wait until you lose a nail again, then," he proposed. "That's a thing they can do, right? It has to be."

The only thing that couldn't be explained from the sudden powers that she was developing—if they could even be classed as that—was that she'd wielded the weapons Aloys had been hiding before she'd killed anyone.

Adrien was the epitome of what a human should strive to be, yet he hadn't been able to.

The high-level demon she'd encountered with Chloé had remarked upon them, recognising them—

She'd killed the other one that had.

There was always one place that a demon could go for information, but she wasn't one of them. The fake identification could get her access, sure, but no one was going to speak to a wide-eyed child asking about topics that they shouldn't know.

Chloé was the only option.

"Boring," was the response she got to bringing it up.

Offended, Marinette squared her shoulders. "What?"

"What's in it for me?" Chloé asked, not looking up from her phone as she tapped away on the screen, her nails making noise with every movement. "Because this sounds like too much hassle."

"Knowledge that you don't have?" she replied, pronouncing each word slowly, as if it would get the message across better. "The dude that killed you knew about it. Don't you want to?"

"Eh." Chloé shrugged. "What's the point?"

She threw her hands up in exasperation. "Knowing _why_ some strange sword is able to kill demons?"

"To be fair, a normal sword would be able to," Chloé pointed out, blasé. "My skin's as squishy as yours."

"Thank you for that information," she muttered. "Seriously, I want to know. The hunter I was living with couldn't give me anything, and the—the guy I got this from died before he could tell me anything."

There was that book of addresses, but she wasn't about to travel across the country to ask the few and far between that had been trusted enough to be pointed out to her.

"So," Chloé started, finally setting her phone and looking up with a smirk. "You want me to flutter my eyelashes and ask about a magical yo-yo and your sword that has absolutely no markings or anything on it that'll be identifiable?"

She didn't hesitate. "Yes."

"I'm sure that'll go real fucking well." Chloé laughed. "Why are you only caring now?"

"You've got two hearts now," Marinette pointed out, avoiding admitting that she hadn't wanted to focus on it for the longest time. "You're not, like, some little lamb asking the bad guys for help any more."

Chloé scowled. "I resent that."

"Doesn't make it not true," she replied, drawing out the words to make it sound like she was singing. "And it's been a while since you've gone out, right?"

With narrowed eyes, Chloé asked, "Are you trying to say I have no friends?"

"You've pretty much said it," Marinette countered, smile tugging on her lips. "You can't stand anyone else. I think the only reason you put up with me is because I'm your glorified bodyguard at this point."

"You are a pest I can't get rid of," Chloé retorted. "Like a stray cat that just keeps coming back."

She laughed. "The stray part is right."

They were similar in that regard.

Chloé had acquaintances and people she spent some time with, but she flittered around, never staying with anyone but Marinette for a prolonged period of time. At first, Marinette had been scared of her, suspicious and not willing to trust her in the slightest, so that had been extended to anyone that Chloé mentioned.

But after so long of Chloé getting her to kill someone who had side-eyed her before, she'd come to realise that Chloé was just petty.

They were as lonely as each other, weren't they?

It was telling that she could relate more to another species than another human.

Adrien was understanding, but there was that underlying goodness to him that made it hard to relate to. He'd cried until his cheeks were wet when they discussed the day he'd killed a demon, his hands shaking as he wiped his eyes, and there was nothing victorious about his experience.

It was another trauma added to his growing list.

But Marinette—

She didn't flinch when she heard someone gasp out in pain from her hand.

Chloé agreed, but said that she wanted to do her make-up first. It had been more toned down for the skin she shifted in for her work—the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and lines that showed in her forehead—and in the time it took for her to primp, Marinette sent a text to Adrien to tell him her plans.

He asked her to come to his after, no matter the time.

She wasn't going to pass up on that offer.

The feeling in her head never left, but that was because she had Chloé with her for hours.

She knew that there would be more demons inside—that some of the staff were bound to be, and that the demons that were brave enough to be customers had to be strong to expose themselves like that—but the sense of wrongness didn't increase with the amount of them.

It was good to know that it wasn't that reliable, that she wouldn't be able to tell how many there were in an instant.

Turning up at the nightclub in ripped jeans and an oversized hoodie wasn't a reason to be turned away, apparently. Chloé had been the one to show their identification, putting her hand on the arm of the bouncer as he looked them over.

Marinette had barely been glanced at.

And as they went inside, she turned and remarked, "I thought you weren't into guys."

Chloé's laughter was drowned out by the music. "I'm not into anyone."

Unlike the last time, she didn't loiter away from the crowded room when Chloé left her to go to the bar. It was close to midnight as it was, late enough to warrant the intoxicated patrons, and she looked to see who was stumbling more while trying to dance, to see whether anyone's bags were exposed from neglect.

Her hands wandered for entirely innocent purposes.

Well, not _that_ innocent.

The wallets and cash found their way into her pocket, stashed away with the zip keeping them safe, and by the time Chloé came over and thrust a drink into her hand, they'd been there for almost an hour.

"Slow," she commented, taking a sip of the drink and feeling the burn in her throat.

When she pulled a face at that, Chloé rolled her eyes. "Loosen up."

"I'm underaged," she shot back.

Chloé snorted. "Do you think I care?"

She downed the rest of her drink, placing the empty glass on a nearby table.

There wasn't anyone worth their time, apparently. Chloé grew bored of dancing just as quickly, grabbing onto Marinette's arm to haul her outside, starting in the direction that they lived in.

"So," she started, head feeling a bit fuzzy from the slight bit of alcohol in her. "What did you find out?"

"Nothing about your yo-yo," Chloé said, running her fingers through her hair and fluffing it to give it more volume. "But your sword is pretty famous."

She paused at that. "What?"

"Yes," Chloé confirmed, her voice sounding light, almost as though she was teasing her. "I've heard about it before—forever ago, back when I was pretty new down here."

That could've been years ago.

Marinette had no concept of how long Chloé had been here instead of Hell.

Instead of focusing on that, she murmured with a furrowed brow, "You never said anything."

"You've got your myths and legends, right?" Chloé replied, the sway in her hips as she walked always present, not a sexual thing of trying to be more alluring. "It's the same with us, too. I've always considered it a story."

Chloé's existence should've been a story; to be kept in fiction, where it was safe and away from unsuspecting victims.

Marinette wondered if she was better off in a story, too.

Her voice was a whisper as she questioned, "What do you mean?"

"It's supposed to be crafted from the weapons of both demons and angels," Chloé said, tilting her head back to look up at the starless sky. "I don't suppose you've stabbed an angel yet, have you?"

She swallowed. "I haven't seen one."

"Yeah, you'd know if you have," Chloé agreed with a shake of her head. "Hell, I haven't even seen one yet, but you might be carrying their weaponry without even realising it. That's fucking weird, isn't it?"

"You don't think it's a story?"

"You've literally got a magical sword under your clothes," was the dry response to that. "I said it felt familiar, didn't I? It makes sense."

"It makes... sense," she said slowly, as it trying to taste the words and get them to sink in. "But it—that's really far-fetched, don't you think?"

Chloé sighed. "Isn't everything by now? You're unlike any other human I've met."

There weight in those words.

Marinette had never met anyone else like her either.

"What else is there?" she persisted, turning her head quick enough to cause her hair to move as she looked up to meet Chloé's gaze. "Is that it?"

Chloé snorted. "I don't have the answers to all your questions."

No one did.

That was a reoccurring thing in her life, unfortunately.

Adrien had his parents to guide him, to help him sort out his decisions in life and provide him the love and comfort he needed to flourish. He was happy, healthy, and offered her everything he could—

But it wasn't enough, was it?

For devoting her life to him, he couldn't do the same for her.

She wouldn't ask him to, regardless.

"No," Marinette murmured, footsteps feeling heavy as they turned the street. "You don't."

-x-

Fu hadn't changed in the time they'd been apart.

He invited her in, placing his old-fashioned kettle on the flame of the hob, waiting patiently for it to heat up as she sat across the room on a cushion on the floor by a low table.

And when he sat down, his knees cracked.

He made a show of pouring tea out for her.

It wasn't a visit filled with small talk.

She wasn't the small and lost child that had stumbled into him, covered in blood and utterly confused.

In the years since, she'd grown taller than him.

And, somehow, he looked even more fragile than before.

She didn't feel anything for him.

"What troubles you?" Fu questioned, holding up his teacup and sniffing the contents with his eyes closed, appearing calm and at ease.

Retrieving the sword from underneath her clothes, she placed it on the table.

She looked him in the eyes and said, "You know what this is."

He didn't try to protest it.

"Yes," Fu confirmed, taking a thoughtful sip of his drink. "Do you?"

It should've been infuriating, but it wasn't. Fu had always worked that way—keeping information from her, only revealing what he deemed to be important, or specifically what she'd asked for. There had never been a moment where they spoke their feelings, and the comfort he'd given an angry and lost child had been teaching her to kill.

Chloé was better than him.

"I've been living with a demon," she bluntly told him.

Fu didn't look alarmed.

There wasn't concern behind his words when he asked, "And how is that working for you?"

"Great, actually," she replied, swirling the contents of her teacup with a gentle movement. "She's taught me a lot."

He hummed. "Has she?"

"Yes," Marinette confirmed, setting down the cup and almost causing it to spill. "I'm sure you're well aware that demons have weapons."

Fu's response was simply, "I've heard about that, yes."

It was never a comfortable situation with him. Marinette couldn't relax and joke around with him. Fu wasn't about to hurt her, not when he could barely stand up without wincing in pain, but violence wasn't the only way to be hurt.

He'd never cared for her, and that was fine.

She didn't need him.

"And angels," she prompted, putting her hand on the exposed blade, curling her fingers around the handle but not fully grasping it. "Demons are pretty similar to us, you know. There's stories that they spread around."

Fu took a sip of his drink. "Do they?"

She took in a sharp breath. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Knowing what you had would've been a burden," was his diplomatic response, completed with a nod of his head with his eyes closed. "Aloys made the mistake of being vocal about it to the wrong people."

"And the bandalore?"

"That one evades me, I'm afraid," Fu replied, smile not reaching his eyes. "An acquaintance of ours attempted to use it and suffered greatly. After determining that it wasn't, shall we say, human-made, Aloys squirrelled it away with the rest of his treasures."

They had to have suffered the same fate as Kim.

She was never going to let Adrien touch it.

"What is this?" she questioned, tapping the blade with her index finger, careful not to scrape the sharp side. "I know it's made of angel and demon weapons, but what else do you know?"

He raised his eyebrows. "Your demon can't tell you more?"

"There's not much to tell," she curtly replied.

Fu tilted his head, looking at her quizzically. "What are you hoping to gain?"

"I want to know," she stated, not averting her gaze. "I want to know how you and Aloys thought it would be a good idea to fight demons when they could kill you in an instant."

"We didn't fight demons," Fu denied.

She frowned. "But you knew."

"Yes," he confirmed. "I suppose we did."

With a huff, she slotted the sword back into the sheath, pulling her shirt down and placing her hands on her knees, digging her nails into her exposed skin there. "Does Aloys' daughter know?"

"Emilie," Fu acknowledged, clearly not needing clarification about who she was referring to. "No, she does not. Aloys kept her away from that."

"Why—"

"You're curious now," Fu remarked, interrupting her. "But have your intentions really changed? You're as selfish as me, Marinette. Why are you only coming here now?"

When she'd stumbled into the city and come across him, she'd been convinced that there was anything special about her. Special might not have been the right word, but the differences between her and Adrien were adding up greatly, separating them by more than just their upbringings.

All she could say was, "I don't want to be like you."

Fu's laughter was loud.

There was history behind the swords—plural, Fu said, confirming that he knew about the second one without her bringing it up—and it matched what Chloé had told her.

It wasn't a secret that angels were careless when they appeared, destroying what they needed to and not bothering to clear up their mistakes when the damage got out of control. While she'd thought demons were supposed to be bad, their counterparts seemed to be just the same.

There was a story.

Fu said that a man's family had been wiped out as a consequence of an angel when he was young, and that he'd strived for vengeance. It sounded like any other fairytale out of a children's book that she'd found Adrien reading when they were younger, and it was hard to come to terms with the potential of it being true.

Getting ahold of a demon's weapon seemed hard enough, let alone acquiring an angel's so they could be forged together to fight both species.

"It may be exaggerated," Fu said, setting up empty teacup down. "But Aloys believed in it. Evidently, you do, too."

She looked away, staring down at her hands instead.

"There's also a saying," he started, the look in his eyes cold, not at all similar to the affectionate way Adrien stared at her in adoration, "that if you're in trouble with demons, praying will seek help for you."

Baffled, all she could say was, "What?"

"It's a matter of who's listening," he said.

-x-

Angels were an accepted part of life for some.

Marinette doubted that anyone really expected one to come down and kill an innocent human, but it did bring up the question of _how_ they knew to appear.

Chloé had done countless immoral deeds; she'd murdered other demons, killed humans without a second glance, stole money, and a number of other things that she'd associated with her other identity across the country before travelling to the capital.

And yet, no angel had come and reprimanded her.

Angels were supposed to be the only thing stopping demons from taking over, from crushing the rest of the humans to dust to rule instead—

It didn't make sense in the grand scheme, did it?

Marinette had never seen one in all her years, but she'd heard of two attacks since she'd moved.

There had to be a reason for them to appear.

It couldn't be that they appeared whenever someone was in danger. She'd seen atrocities that anyone would've wanted to be shielded from, and even if there was a chance it was true, that doubt was there when she considered that no angel had come to Adrien's aid when he was in danger.

Angels wanted to kill anyone pure as much as demons, didn't they?

Information was sparse and hard to come by.

Chloé confirmed that there didn't have to be purity involved for an angel to appear. She'd heard all about ones attacking outside the city, from demons that had survived and ripped the angel's arms out of their sockets, killing them and ending their single life.

For demons having a power reset when they lost their lives, it seemed unfair that angels perished permanently after a single death.

Chloé didn't share the same feelings about that.

All the talk confirmed was that purity didn't need to be involved for when an angel would appear, though there was a common theme of humans being there.

Did she count as that?

When she looked at her healed arm in the morning, no longer scraped and bloody from where she'd collided with brick, she didn't know the answer to that any more.

It wasn't just her attitude that was any different.

And yet, somehow, Adrien liked her as she was.

He'd trail kisses from her forehead down to her nose, laughing as he pressed them along her jawline, avoiding her lips so she'd huff and claim that he was teasing her, and his eyes would crinkle at the corners when he smiled before finally kissing her properly.

The confidence he was showing in how he interacted with her was becoming more and more apparent.

Whereas they'd been too shy to do much outside of his bedroom before, Adrien was pulling her into a hug whenever he wanted, urging her to wrap her arms around his waist and lean on her chest between classes while they waited for the door to open for them to go in, and he wasn't embarrassed about openly showing her affection when he wanted.

The first time he kissed her in front of one of his parents, his face had grown a bright shade of red when his mother clapped before cooing about how cute the two of them were.

Marinette realised that she was more possessive with her actions.

When they were set to part, no matter if it was outside of his home, in his bedroom, or in front of their class-mates before she went to the library, she adored that feeling of warmth that blossomed in her chest when he looked at her with that endeared gaze when she tugged on his shirt, urging him to lean down so she could kiss him.

Since knowing that he was okay with expressing affection in public—no longer concerned that they'd have to explain it to Alya and Nino and try to describe their relationship—it was like they suddenly couldn't stop touching each other.

She loved it when he was speaking to their class-mates, smiling at something one of them said, before she caught his attention and his expression changed in a blink of an eye, opening up and showing just how much he adored her with a look.

For once, Marinette felt like she belonged.

When she expressed that she didn't know what was happening, that she was starting to question herself more and more, Adrien had pressed a kiss to each of her knuckles, looking her in the eyes as he murmured, "You'll be okay."

And when it was him saying it, she could almost believe it.

Adrien had become a constant in her life, and she wouldn't want it to be any other way.

He had questions that she couldn't answer, though.

"So," he started, leaning back against the sofa and stretching his legs out across her lap, his toe socks in clear view. "I'm still pure, right?"

She narrowed her eyes. "Unless you've done something terrible since last weekend, yes."

"I mean, I don't know what I've even done right in the first place—"

"Shut up," she interrupted, nothing but fondness in her tone. "Why are you asking?"

"I'm just trying to understand it, I guess," he murmured, turning his head to press against a pillow he'd brought over, closing his eyes. "It would be easier for the both of us if I just... stopped, wouldn't it?"

There was so much to unpack there. "I don't think you can just turn it off."

"What if you help me rob a bank?" he joked.

"Your parents are rich enough already," she said, flicking his knees before resting her hands on his exposed calves. Despite the weather getting colder, he hadn't switched to his warmer pyjamas yet. "You don't have to change for me. It's my choice to be here, remember?"

"But—" Adrien cut himself off, taking in a sharp breath. "I-I killed that demon before and it didn't change anything."

She fiddled with the top of his sock. "Maybe demons don't count."

"Maybe." He didn't sound convinced. "But it's still a bad thing, isn't it? I—I hurt someone. Intentionally."

"You did it for me," she replied. "If I wasn't there, you wouldn't have done it, right?"

He sighed. "It doesn't make sense."

"Neither does your idea to rob a bank," she teased, pulling on the sock so it snapped back lightly against his skin. "You're perfect the way you are."

"Stop," he mumbled, pressing his face further into the pillow, though it wasn't far enough to hide his smile. "You're supposed to be helping me."

"I am," Marinette replied, laughter causing her voice to wobble. "I'm boosting your self-confidence."

He sniffed. "I thought I had enough of that already."

"You deserve all of it," she declared before slumping over to join him on his side, plucking the cushion out from his face and tossing it onto the floor. She settled down beside him, resting her head by the arm of the sofa, grinning from their closeness. "You deserve everything."

With a pointed shift of their newly intertwined legs, he asked, "Even you almost kneeing me in the dick?"

Laughing, she adjusted their positions, allowing him to slip an arm underneath her so she'd shuffle closer, throwing her leg over his and hugging him close enough for their chests to press together. It was a position that had taken a lot of shyness to work towards, and she'd only just stopped feeling shy when they were side-by-side and so close.

"There'd be more space on the bed," he proposed, gently nudging his nose against hers. "If you want."

The sofa was their safe space where they spent their evenings with barely any space between them. When Alya and Nino were there was when they pulled out the beanbag instead, but it was barely ever on the bed.

She assumed it was because he didn't want her there.

"You sure?" she asked, her voice but a whisper.

Adrien's response was pressing a kiss to her lips before sitting up, tugging her gently by the wrist to follow him. He climbed over to the side of the bed that was against the wall, careful not to kick Plagg's curled up body by the bottom where the duvet was scrunched up, and patted down on the mattress for her to join.

It was definitely more comfortable than the sofa.

Marinette had her head resting against the crook of his neck, eyes closed in content as he held her close, the distance between them little enough for her to feel every breath and share the warmth of his skin.

He pressed a kiss to the top of her head, murmuring into her hair, "I love you."

She smiled, nuzzling into his neck as she hugged him closer. "Do you?"

"Yeah," he breathed, adjusting his arm around her. "I really, really do."

"You know I love you," she said, placing a kiss against his skin. "In more ways than one."

"One might call that obsession," he teased.

She could feel it as he laughed. "Might?"

"Okay, it's an obsession," Adrien agreed, the arm that wasn't underneath her head loosely draped over her waist, his fingertips playing with the end of her oversized t-shirt that had bunched up. "But I'm very flattered that you seem to like me so much."

With a soft laugh, she replied, "Who wouldn't?"

"A lot of people," he insisted, starting to trace patterns onto her back with his fingertips. "I don't think anyone feels about me as... intensely as you do."

She quietly asked, "Is that a problem?"

"No," he murmured, his breath warm against her scalp. "As long as you love yourself, too, I'm fine with it."

Her cheeks were starting to hurt from smiling.

There was no describing all the things that he made her feel. The amount of positive emotions she felt with him were unmatched and couldn't be compared to anything else. And it was the quiet moments where she'd gaze into his eyes, be close enough to see the blond on the end of his eyelashes, that she fully appreciated how he'd accepted her without judgement.

She felt blessed.

She straightened out, pulling back to be able to look into his eyes, and whispered before pressing her lips to his, "No one loves me like you do."

And as they kissed, it was like he was trying to convey that with every soft touch.

She felt warm.

When she woke up, that feeling was still there. Adrien's duvet had been pulled up to cover them at some point, and she'd drooled a wet patch into his shoulder from where she'd been sleeping against him.

He was still asleep.

Marinette stared at him from where the sunlight was coming in from the window, the curtains still drawn and left open from when he'd allowed her access the previous night, and took in how peaceful his expression was as he breathed slowly.

He had marks on his face from where he'd been pressed against his pillow, his hair that was almost long enough to tuck behind his ears was a mess, looking so much worse than when he forgot to brush it in the morning, and all she could think was that the sight was solely hers to see.

Their phones were across the room, left forgotten before they'd climbed into bed together. In all the times she'd come to visit, she'd always left before sunrise on the latest of days, never daring to sleep when there was the possibility of one of his parents coming to check on him.

There wasn't any sound coming from the house.

She had to assume they were either still in bed or quietly sitting downstairs.

There came the problem with it being morning. If she climbed out of the window, she'd have to walk and leave like a normal person due to it being light outside, and it was likely that one of his neighbours would see her.

She breathed out slowly.

Plagg was curled up on the floor on Adrien's shirt that he'd been wearing before he'd changed into pyjamas.

And when she looked back to see Adrien sleeping peacefully, she made the decision to wake him up to say she needed to try and sneak out of his home. If his parents caught her while he was still asleep, it would've been even worse.

She nudged his shoulder, not quite shaking him, fondly watching as he scrunched his face up at the movements before blearily opening his eyes. Confusion was present when he caught sight of her, the furrowing of his eyebrows a clear sign that he was wondering what had happened, before his lips silently parted as he blinked rapidly.

"Hi," she whispered, clearing her throat.

A dopey smile appeared on his lips, dimples showing on his cheeks.

And when he spoke in a hushed tone, his expression turned into one that almost looked like awe. "You're—you're here."

"I fell asleep," she murmured, sleepily pressing her forehead against his, their noses brushing. "Why didn't you kick me out?"

His lips were almost touching hers as he confessed softly, "I didn't want to wake you up."

She kissed him.

It was slow, matching the sleepiness from just waking up, and she happily moved closer to feel his warmth despite the discomfort from sleeping in her clothing all night. Her shoes were waiting on his desk, his slippers she'd been wearing left by the bed from where she'd taken them off last night, but despite how much clothing she was wearing, the moment felt like the barest she'd even been with him.

She giggled when he kissed her eyelids, whispering how pretty she looked in the morning even though she had drool dried on her cheek.

"I woke you up to say I'm sneaking out," she confessed, squirming when he kissed her ear, trying to hold back laughter from ticklish she was there. "I should really go before your parents check in on you."

"They knock," he said, burying his face into the crook of her neck, holding her close. "Stay for a bit. I only get woken up if I'm not showing any signs of life by noon."

She snorted. "That's your cut off time?"

"It's considered lazy to stay in bed past nine," he told her, breaths coming out against her skin. "But I get away with it because my mother loves me."

Running her fingers through his hair, feeling how soft the strands felt, she said, "How kind."

"I have a question."

"Go on," she urged, closing her eyes as she rested her cheek against the top of his head, almost curled around him.

Adrien bluntly asked, "Would I stop being pure if we have sex?"

She stopped playing with his hair. "What?"

"Like—" Adrien made a frustrated noise, nuzzling against her neck and hiding his expression in the process. "That's a thing, isn't it? That's why they're called purity rings—because they're untouched still?"

"I—" Marinette swallowed, feeling a bit dazed. "I don't know."

"Not that I'm trying to come onto you right now," he babbled, embarrassment clear from how quickly he was talking. "I just—I'm trying to make sense of it all, you know?"

"Well." Her voice cracked. "We'll—we'll tackle that when it comes up, yeah?"

She could feel the deep breath he let out. "Yeah."

In the end, she crept out the window when Adrien had gone downstairs to get his parents' attention.

-x-

For Halloween, there was no party at Nino's like the previous year.

Instead, Alya invited the three of them over to watch horror films. Adrien and Nino were given the option to say no to any choices since they weren't fond of them, and they settled on a fantasy-based one that didn't feature much violence or murder, though it was fun to see their reactions to the jump scares.

They had packets of different sweets open in front of them, their food of choice that evening not healthy in the slightest, and the carbonated drinks they picked were much the same. Adrien was overjoyed with the selection, remarking how the drinks tasted different to the diet versions that were all his parents purchased.

"My teeth can handle this," he said before downing the rest of his glass.

He was wonderfully childish in the best ways.

When her phone buzzed and Chloé's name appeared on her screen, Marinette frowned.

It was Chloé asking her to meet up.

She said no.

Chloé sent back a blurry picture of a man having dinner with someone else sat at the table.

Marinette sent back question marks.

Chloé sent back the address.

It was impossible to get her to say please.

With a sigh, she turned to Adrien, letting him see the messages.

He wasn't disturbed by it.

"You should go," he encouraged. "I've got... two hours before I'm being picked up. You'll make it back before then, right?"

She pulled a face. "You sure?"

Nino butted in with, "What's up, dude?"

"She got a booty call," Adrien replied.

"I did _not_," she denied, jabbing him lightly with her elbow. "But duty calls. You guys okay if I come back later?"

Alya frowned. "Duty?"

"I'm being summoned by her majesty," she dryly said, shaking her phone as an explanation. "I won't be too long, I think."

It was clear when Alya processed what she really meant from that. Her face showed a range of emotions, going as quickly as they appeared before settling on concern as she asked, "Will you be okay?"

Adrien beat her to responding. "It's okay, Marinette's a pro at this by now."

"I don't know about that," she denied, putting her bag back over her and making sure it was tight enough to stay on for her method of travel. "You cool with me climbing out your window or are you going to escort me downstairs?"

Alya blinked.

"Window!" Nino said, sounding far more excited than he should've. "She's always rejected me romantically climbing in it. It's only right for you to leave that way."

She laughed.

When she climbed out, dropping down onto the ground with only a slight pain in her ankles that would surely heal before the night was over, she could hear clapping coming from the open window above her.

She shot them a salute before running down the street, getting to a more covered area before getting her bandalore out.

Chloé had wanted help because the demon was stronger than her.

As it turned out, it was one of the bartenders from the nightclub.

She didn't ask her reasons for wanting him dead, though it did mean killing his human date to avoid complications.

Chloé got more enjoyment out of it than she should've.

"Don't you think it's weird?" Marinette mused, crouching down to tie her shoelaces again when they'd walked at least two streets away from crime scene.

Chloé had gotten a cigarette out, exhaling before replying, "What are you blabbering about now?"

"No one ever comes to help," she clarified, standing up and pushing her hair out of her place. "We've—we're not exactly doing good things, are we? But no angels ever come to help them."

"Because I don't play with humans," Chloé said, haughtily raising her head. "It's not fun when they can't regenerate, you know? I'm not taking my chances of an angel appearing because I gave them the time to realise they were going to die."

"There haven't been any attacks," she pointed out. "Do they—do you think they just don't care?"

Chloé's laughter was loud.

"Marinette," Chloé managed to get out, amusement coating every word. "If they cared, do you think I'd still be walking around?"

She clicked her tongue. "You can't die."

"They're dying out, I guess." There wasn't an air of certainty to her words—it was pure speculation from a being that had been alive for centuries longer than Marinette would ever make it. "There's stories of them coming down a lot more, back when Hell first died."

"Ever going to tell me exactly when that is?"

"When a lot of shit started happening here." Chloé winked. "There wasn't exactly any rules when we first came here."

She snorted. "That's very helpful, thanks."

"Anything for you, kid," Chloé said, reaching out and pinching her cheek with more force than necessary.

Marinette slapped her hand away. "Fuck off."

"Is that any way to talk to me?" Chloé demanded, grabbing onto Marinette's chin and turning her head to look at her, hard enough to leave bruises come morning. "You owe me your life. I might as well be your mother."

She glowered. "You hate having wrinkles."

Chloé sniffed. "I had you young."

"You don't like men."

"You're right," Chloé agreed, nodding her head in agreement as her hand fell back down to her side. "I can't have my backstory be that I swore them off because I was scorned. That's not my style at all."

Gently touching her chin where the pain was remaining, Marinette exclaimed, "You don't need a backstory as my mother!"

"Pretty sure I'm the one that gets to decide what happens to you," Chloé said with her upper lip curling in disgust. "Be quiet while this adult is talking."

Marinette rolled her eyes. "All right, old lady."

Chloé tripped over over.

By the time she made it back to Alya's, her chin felt tender and she had a scrape along her cheek, hands, and where her knees had been exposed. Alya had crept downstairs to let her in the front door, eyes wide and lips parted silently as she ushered her in, and Adrien crossed the room to hug her immediately.

"You're back!" Adrien said, holding her close and burying his nose in her hair. "You've got, like, ten minutes before my father gets here, so good timing."

She laughed. "I make it in time, then."

"Only just," he confirmed with a laugh. "You're not going to cry because I haven't got my cool plasters on me, are you?"

"I've got some!" Alya interrupted.

And when she turned to look at her, Alya had a first aid kit in her hands, looking terribly out of place in her own room as she stared at them with that uncertain expression still.

"Oh," Marinette breathed, surprised by the thoughtfulness. "Thank you."

The patch-up job was completely unnecessary when the cuts would be healed by morning, but she appreciated the thought.

-x-

Adrien's birthday was different from last year.

She was horrified when he told her his plans.

Instead of just having friends over like he had the previous year, his birthday fell on a weekday, so his parents had proposed going out for dinner.

That wasn't the part that terrified her.

They kept insisting that he invite her along.

Adrien had told her beforehand, warning her that his mother and father would both pester her to come along until she agreed—and wouldn't it have been even ruder if she kept denying it when it wasn't just at his home?

As soon as Adrien's father offered to call her grandfather to get permission for her to come that she agreed and said that she'd ask him about it.

Adrien was happy that she was coming along.

He beamed. "I won't have to text you!"

The experiences she had at restaurants were with Chloé. Sometimes they were the dingy kind, and the most upper-class they'd gone to had been one that had an expensive steak that Chloé had insisted they go to after they'd killed a demon that had offended her greatly the previous month.

She didn't know what she was supposed to talk to his parents about.

Then, the offer to pick her up came up, which she quickly shot down and said that she'd walk to their house, and it was only when Adrien backed her up that they agreed to it.

They had to have been getting suspicious from how non-involved her grandfather was. From all the times that he'd supposedly dropped Adrien off, they'd never seen him.

She wasn't going back to Fu's to ask for help.

It was enough that he was answering any calls from the school, saying he was too old to come in and asking for her reports to be sent to him instead, surely being tossed in the bin as soon as they arrived.

The car ride with the four of them was a little awkward.

Marinette was in the back beside Adrien. He held her hand and offered her a smile, not trying to lure her into conversation since he knew she wouldn't be that open to speaking around people she didn't know.

Dinner was stifling.

Adrien's parents kept looking at her with patient smiles—more his mother than his father—and asking gentle prying questions about her life; where she'd attended before transferring schools, what she liked to do in her free time, and if she had any plans for the future in mind.

Thankfully, Adrien kept jumping in and answering for her when she was unsure.

He decided to tell them that she liked the same comics as him.

That wasn't exactly a lie when he was the one forcing her to read them.

When it came time to pay, she felt even more awkward when Adrien's mother reached across to gently put her hand on hers, telling her that they had never expected her to pay in the first place.

She looked at Adrien for advice and he just shrugged.

He was helpful like that.

They tried to get her to say her address on the drive back to his house. Marinette blanked, suddenly finding it hard to recall which roads were nearby his, so it was Adrien that pointed out a random one and said that she lived down there.

She hopped out and walked near a random house, waving at Adrien as they drove away.

After the car turned the corner, she slowly made her way to his street just to peer in to see that they'd made it back safely.

It was the first dinner she'd spent with anyone else's parents.

She didn't want to repeat it any time soon.

With people she didn't know, she clammed up and kept quiet, unsure on what they wanted her to say. She knew that she was awkward, but that night confirmed it all the more.

She had no idea why Alya said that everyone's parents liked her.

Adrien told her later that they thought she was shy, but sweet.

It was baffling.

However, what was even more baffling happened when Adrien invited her over for dinner. His parents had gone out together, given him permission to allow her over—a chance that he wasn't going to pass on.

His words were that they wouldn't know if the door was closed if they were gone.

It was a little funny.

His idea was that they could cook together. She had limited experience from the lessons at school. All those times she'd only had to follow instructions, and she hadn't tried to replicate any of it outside of the classroom.

He waved a hand dismissively. "It's fine, we've got this."

She wasn't so confident.

When it came time to cut the vegetables, he teased, "You're the one good with a knife, right?"

She squinted. "You're trusting me?"

"It's not _that_ hard," he replied, bumping his hip against hers and gesturing for her to pick up the knife on the chopping board. "I'll start the sauce while you do that. Teamwork is good, right?"

"Sure," she muttered, looking at the few different kinds of vegetables in front of her. "Which do you want first?"

"Any." He shrugged. "I'll just dump them all in at the same time."

She snorted. "Sounds difficult."

"I said I can cook, not that I'm great at it," Adrien replied with a laugh, not at all offended. "Besides, if we get takeaway, my parents will wonder where we got the money from. If I say it's from you, they'll get offended and try and give you the money back somehow."

She hummed. "Cooking's the lesser evil?"

"Yes, cooking is less evil than my parents," he confirmed, amusement clear in his tone. "You don't have any allergies that you haven't told me about, right?"

She shook her head. "I'm not picky."

"Yeah, I've figured that out already," Adrien responded, turning to look at her with raised eyebrows. "All you eat is leftovers that are, like, cooled down into a solid blob."

"I'm not going to waste food," she retorted, defensive. "And there's no microwave we can use at school or anything. I'd rather have something else for dinner, so it works out."

"You're strange," he told her. "In the best ways, but also the worst."

She huffed, starting to cut the first vegetable into cubes. "Aren't you supposed to love me?"

"That's why I'm cooking for you," he cooed. "I'll fatten you up nicely."

Marinette wrinkled her nose. "Don't say that."

He gasped, putting a hand to his chest as his other opened the fridge. "You don't want to eat my love?"

"I'm a bit worried that your love is edible in the first place," she muttered, looking at him through narrowed eyes. "You sure you're good at this?"

"I made you a cake before!"

She grinned. "Yes, that was nice."

"Thank you." He took a dramatic bow for that, knocking his hand against the counter in the process and jerking upright, hissing in pain. "Shut up, don't say anything."

She tried to hold back her laughter. "I'm not."

"I can feel your judgement already," he proclaimed, turning around to rummage in the fridge for the right ingredients. "Just you wait, Marinette. I'm going to cook the best thing you've ever eaten."

Fondly, she replied, "I don't think that's going to happen."

"The best thing you've ever eaten by me," he corrected.

"The cake was pretty good," she mused. "You sure you can beat that?"

"Pretty good isn't perfect," Adrien said, shutting the fridge door and turning to look at her with a smile that had far too much confidence for the amount he cooked. "Then again, everything pales in comparison to me. Wouldn't you agree?"

It was as she was laughing that the knife slipped, pressing down into her finger instead of the vegetables.

She withdrew her hand in shock, pulling it back and letting the knife clatter onto the chopping board. And as she inspected for damage, expecting there to be some kind of red mark from the amount of pressure that she'd put on it, Adrien quickly came over, asking what had happened.

There wasn't anything there.

She stared at her unblemished finger in confusion.

"Maybe you didn't press down that hard," he said after they'd confirmed that she wasn't hurt. He'd taken over the chopping, not trusting her with the knife any more, so she was sitting up on the countertop beside him, watching. "I'm happy that you're not missing part of your finger, but you seem... annoyed."

"A bit," she confirmed, holding up her finger and staring at her unmarked skin. "I'm not imagining it, I swear."

"What?" he questioned, curious. "Either you hurt yourself or you didn't. There's no in-between."

She shrugged.

When his attention was on the frying pan, idly stirring the contents with a spatula with his back to her, Marinette picked up the knife slowly. It was average-sized and didn't look to be anything special.

She pressed the bottom of the blade into her fingertip, curious and full of wonder when it didn't do anything to her. With more pressure being applied, almost straining her arm as she tried to push the tip of the knife into her skin, the result stayed the same.

With that same sense of wonder, she pressed the tip into the cutting board, seeing as it sunk into the wood, creating an indent.

She hummed in response to Adrien prattling on. He was too preoccupied with what he was doing to see whether she was actually interested in what he was saying instead of just humouring him.

Making the right noises to urge him on worked well.

Gripping the handle of the knife, she inspected it as the light caught on the metal before attempting again. Instead of her fingertip, she pushed up the sleeve of her hoodie, exposing her forearm before pressing it into her skin, trying to make it skin in like it had to the wood.

It didn't.

And wasn't that _strange_?

She sliced it across her skin in an action that would've taken her wrist clean off if it had been her own blade, but nothing happened. There was no angry red appearing on her skin, no pain, and all that happened when she pressed the hardest she could was that a faint line was left behind.

There no blood, no cut.

Pleasantly bewildered, she set the knife down before reaching for another one out of the drawer. It was bigger that time, maintained to the same pristine condition like the other. When she brought it down upon her skin with a slicing motion, the same result happened.

Adrien decided to turn around then.

"What are you doing?" he questioned, surprise clear in his voice.

She must've looked strange, sitting up on his countertop with a large knife in her hand.

Rather than get defensive and guard the new development, her shoulders relaxed, smile appearing on her lips as she announced, "I think I've found something else out."

Bemused, he only replied with, "Okay?"

"I'll tell you after we eat," she decided, setting the knife down on the chopping board beside the other one.

He didn't protest to that.

"This is good," Marinette complimented after swallowing her third mouthful. "Not as good as the cake, though."

He sighed. "Is that my legacy now? Will I never beat it?"

"It's a good thing to be remembered for," she said, patting his hand to show her sympathy. "It was almost as sweet as you."

Trying to hide his smile, he narrowed his eyes. "I'm sure that was supposed to sound like a compliment."

Marinette beamed.

When it came time for the explanation, after he'd placed their dirty dishes into the dishwasher, he wasn't impressed.

Adrien crossed his arms, looking at her with a frown. "So, you thought it would be a good idea to try and cut yourself literally behind my back?"

It felt like she was being scolded by a teacher from the way he was standing up in front of where she was sitting. "Yes?"

"Marinette," he sighed, pushing his face out of his face with an air of exasperation. "I know you can heal, but that doesn't mean you should just—just hurt yourself without thinking it through. What if I turned around and found you with a slit wrist?"

She shrugged.

"I would've died," he said.

"Maybe fainted," she muttered, tucking her legs underneath her and getting comfortable. "You were busy. I didn't want to bother you."

"You didn't want to bother me?" He breathed out slowly. "It bothers me that you did it at all."

She didn't sound sincere as she murmured, "I'm sorry."

"You're not," Adrien denied, calling her out. And as he sunk onto his knees in front of her, putting his hands on her knees and meeting her gaze, he said, "I'm not trying to control you or whatever, but remember what I said about hating you being hurt?"

There was that little feeling of guilt crawling in her chest at that. "I got carried away."

"You did," he agreed, a fond laugh escaping him as he took one of her hands into his own, intertwining their fingers. "But give me some warning next time, yeah?"

"Can I give you warning now?"

"That's a terrible idea," Adrien replied without hesitation. "My parents might be back soon. I don't think I can explain away you trying to cut yourself if we can't clean it up right away."

"Fine," she agreed with a sigh. "But I'm trying it as soon as I get home."

There was a pause.

Then, he gave in and said, "As long as Chloé's there with you."

With raised eyebrows, she remarked, "I never thought you'd put her as an authority figure."

"Not quite," he said, smile showing his dimples. "I think you're both as stupid as each other, but she's not going to let you die any time soon."

She laughed. "Such faith."

The knives at Chloé's weren't used often. Marinette picked one out of the drawer after yelling out her plan to Chloé—who was in the shower, telling her to _shut up—_and she waited until she could hear footsteps to start.

It had the same result as Adrien's knife.

"Well, that's fucking weird," Chloé said as her greeting, plucking the knife from her hand and inspecting it. "You're not purposely being a pussy about this, are you?"

She blinked. "Eh?"

With that, Chloé lifted the knife up and brought it down on Marinette's arm with no warning. The pain was there in an instant, Marinette shrieking and pulling her arm away and clutching it to her chest eyes filling with tears from the mixture of the sudden throbbing and surprise.

Chloé was grinning.

"You're such a dick," Marinette blurted, inspecting her arm to see how bad the damage was. There was a small cut across her skin, droplets of blood gathering, but it wasn't the devastating slash that it should've been from the force that had been behind it. "What the fuck?"

"Let me try again," Chloé demanded.

She moved away, shaking her head. "No!"

"You're the one that called me in here for this," Chloé stated, moving her wet hair behind her shoulder with a toss of her head. "Come on, loser. I'm not going to chop your arm off with this stupid knife."

She stared. "That's not as reassuring as you think it is."

"I'm helping." Chloé's smile showed her teeth. "This is what you called me here for, yes?"

Marinette wiped the blood away with her thumb, smearing it across her pale skin and watching as it stopped "To supervise, not attack me!"

"Oh, don't be so dramatic," Chloé scolded, adjusting her grip on the knife before holding out her free arm, bringing the knife down with as much force as she'd used on her. Chloé hissed in pain, pulling the knife out and causing blood to spurt out and dribble onto the floor in a steady flow, the complete opposite of the wound it had inflicted before. "Fuck, that hurts."

Marinette was sure that it had reached her bone.

As quickly as it was there, the wound healed over, Chloé's skin covering the gore that had been there moments ago, but that didn't get rid of the blood on her skin or the splatters on the floor.

"I'm not cleaning that," Marinette flatly said.

Chloé sniffed. "I'm going to cut you again now."

"No, you're not," she denied.

"I hurt myself, it's only fair," Chloé replied, gesturing with the bloody knife to her newly-healed arm. "You clearly weren't using enough force to do _anything_."

She scowled. "Because I'm human."

"A fucking weird one, yeah," Chloé agreed, sounding thoughtful. And to emphasise that, she pointed the knife up at her face, resting her chin on the tip as though it was her hand, not flinching when it pierced her skin. "When did this happen?"

Marinette took the knife back without resistance. "Tonight."

"Congratulations, you've ascended to the title of freak."

With a sigh, she muttered, "So kind."

-x-

The bruises appeared, but the cuts came less and less.

When she slipped and fell off a roof because of snow, she didn't break anything; rather, her ankle throbbed, and come morning, bruises were coming up on her pale skin, but it didn't reflect what it really should've looked like from falling from such a height.

Marinette was skirting the line of sanity at that point.

Adrien grounded her, kissing her softly and telling her that she wasn't any different to who she was before—because why _should_ it matter that she was a little bit less breakable than he was?

He gave her purpose, comfort, and talked her out of her negative thoughts that were spiralling in her mind. Adrien understood her, had become desensitised to the point that he'd licked his thumb before brushing it on her cheek to get rid of a splatter of blood before he panicked and realised that it probably wasn't _hers—_

She didn't know whether she should feel bad about that.

Wasn't she corrupting him somehow?

He'd been put through so many traumatic events because of her, and yet, she thought he was the strong one out of the two of them. Marinette was detached from her feelings for the most part, so much so that when she came to visit him in the evenings, it sometimes came crashing down with the realisation of what she'd done.

And he was always there, whispering that she wasn't a bad person, pressing soft kisses to her cheeks and brushing away the tears that came.

She was a bad person.

With him, she thought she was a little less bad.

When it came time for the winter holiday, Marinette managed to convince him to get their work done for their classes within the first week.

After complaining that they had to work at all, he readily agreed to her plan when she offered to stay the night again.

Although it was risky, looking at his peaceful expression as he breathed evenly, asleep and vulnerable, was more than worth it.

Alya and Nino were still paranoid when they went out together.

The cinema proved that the demon wasn't there any more.

There wasn't that sense of wrong in her head, so she relaxed, sharing a large drink with Adrien and leaning on him to be more comfortable throughout the film.

At one point, he'd leaned towards her to whisper something in her ear that had her laughing, and it had evolved into them kissing softly in the dark, not paying attention to the screen at all.

Nino threw popcorn at them.

Marinette raised her middle finger, blushing.

Adrien wasn't embarrassed.

With Chloé, they were rounding back, hitting the demons that they'd killed before, eliminating them before they were able to get their second heart back. It was a matter of asserting dominance, keeping them down and unable to gain back what they'd lost. And from what she'd been told, Chloé said that after the second death, it became twice as hard to grow again.

It had taken a year with Marinette's help.

Sometimes, she wondered whether she should feel sorry for demons, then she remembered that she struggled to care for other humans as it was.

But with every injury that healed over too quickly or failed to inflict all the pain it was supposed to, she really started to question whether she was that any more.

No one had the answers for her.

And when there wasn't anyone to give them, she felt like she was floating, trapped and experiencing the same scenarios, over and over again.

However, the plus side of the sudden toughness of her body meant that she could handle being thrown around a lot more. She wasn't put out of commission because she'd been squeezed too tightly and her ribs weren't broken any more—

It was thrilling.

She could stand up after being thrown or squatted like an insect, the supernatural strength sending her flying. Whereas she would've been disorientated and close to losing consciousness before, she could brush it off, the throbbing in her body spurring her on.

Adrien was equally fascinated and horrified by her findings.

"Do you think you can do anything else?" he questioned, holding his gloved hands up to his mouth and breathing on them to warm up. "You're, like, tough now, yeah?"

She tilted her head, curious. "Yes?"

He sounded far too excited as he exclaimed, "Try and punch something!"

They were in his garden, playing around in the snow that had settled. Adrien had the bright idea of making snowmen, going as far as to take his scarf off and wrap it around one before he got too cold and took it back, pouting the whole time.

She stared at him. "I'm sorry, what?"

"You can punch more things now without hurting yourself!" he happily explained, moving his hands as he spoke, showing how enthusiastic he was. "That's kind of badass, right?"

"You want me to punch stuff," she repeated flatly.

He grinned. "Yes."

They were bundled up in enough clothing that she was starting to sweat underneath. When Adrien's father had seen that her coat wasn't thick enough, he'd thrust one of Adrien's mother's at her, demanding that she wear it to stay warm. The sleeves fell down over her hands, the end of the coat reaching below her knees, but she was a lot warmer than she would've been without.

Adrien's nose was red, matching his cheeks and ears—which weren't coloured due to shyness, for once—and he was smiling, not put off by the cold in the slightest.

"Come on," he coaxed, taking her gloved hand into his, pulling her across his garden until they were near a tree. "Punch this."

She frowned. "Your tree?"

"I did it before!" he defended, pointing towards it in accusation. "It really hurt. I swear, I thought I broke my hand for a good five minutes. Then again, I was ten."

"You want me to repeat your mistakes," she said, shaking her hand in disappointment. "That's mean, isn't it?"

"Marinette!" he all but whined. "Humour me a bit. If you can—well, not cut yourself, I'm sure you can punch a tree without any problems."

She sighed. "And if your parents look out the window to see us?"

"I'll say I dared you," he said without hesitation, putting his hands on his hips. "That's a good excuse, isn't it? I can just say we're stupidly competitive and that's why we're together."

With a laugh, she replied, "I think you're the stupid one here."

"Rude, but true," Adrien agreed, closing the distance between them to wrap his arms around her waist, his cold nose touching her own as he leaned down. "But you like that, right?"

Her smile reached her eyes. "Yeah."

Kissing felt weird when her face was horribly cold.

After he agreed with her on that thought, they parted, Marinette twisting her wrist and getting comfortable with the movements of punching. The only problem she could foresee was that she might damage her gloves, but she didn't want to take them off and feel the cold weather on her bare skin.

"I'll buy you some more," he promised.

She wrinkled her nose at that. "I earn more money than you."

His smile was wide. "Earn it, do you?"

Childishly, she stuck her tongue out at him.

The tree was wider than her. Punching it didn't cause anything significant to happen; she hissed in pain, but her knuckles weren't broken, and she hadn't hurt herself badly.

Adrien actually sounded sad when he said, "No super strength, then."

She kicked snow at him. "We weren't testing for that!"

"It was worth a try!"

They bickered, laughing enough to make her cheeks hurt from more than just the cold, before he convinced her to go inside to have a hot drink. His mother was there, clicking her tongue in disapproval from how red their faces were, and Marinette found herself being told to sit at the table before food was being given without any question if she was hungry.

It was one of her favourites.

Adrien shrugged, smiling. "I might've told them?"

With the newfound discovery that she was less breakable, Adrien's ideas became borderline ridiculous.

While his father was upstairs in the office, his mother out to visit a friend, Adrien had pulled her into the living room and started moving the furniture without telling her why. He pushed the sofa, huffing and asking for help when he couldn't move it far.

He said as long as the furniture didn't touch the walls, they wouldn't be told off.

"Why are we doing this?" Marinette asked, looking at the open space that they'd opened up, absolutely baffled by the turn of events.

Adrien grinned, flashing her a peace sign with his two fingers. "I've got an idea."

"Yeah, that's a little worrisome," she muttered, scuffing her feet against the wooden floorboards, feeling the chill through her socks. "What?"

With a dramatic air, he stepped closer, putting his hands on her shoulders as he stated, "I have decided to live vicariously through you."

She blinked. "What does that even mean?"

"It means," he started, gesturing towards the open area. "I can't do this without risking breaking my neck—but you'd be fine!"

"What is _this_?"

Adrien clapped his hands, "Try doing a backflip."

She stared. "What?"

"I've never been able to do one!" he exclaimed, perhaps a bit too loud. "I had dance lessons when I was younger, sure, but I've never really been good at that kind of stuff. Plus, I'm breakable. You're not."

And as she laughed, the noise started to come out as a wheeze when he pouted, crossing his arms and disapproving of her reaction, only making it worse. Marinette was caught off-guard from just how Adrien the suggestion was—it really wasn't out of the ordinary for him to ask something so strange.

"I've never even tried to do a flip before," she mused, wiping her eyes with her palm. "Are you sure we should do this here?"

"It's either here or outside in the snow," he replied with a shrug. "This is the better choice, right? You won't get a face full of snow when you fail."

She snorted. "Oh, _when_ I fail?"

"You've said you've never done one!" he retorted, waggling his finger at her. "There's no way you're going to do it first try. If you do, I'll—I don't know, eat my hat or something."

"I'm sorry," she said slowly, brow furrowed. "You'll eat your _hat_?"

"It's an expression!" Adrien explained with a laugh. "Don't ask me, okay? I don't know. It's a thing. A thing that you now know and are probably never going to use. Yes."

She just smiled. "Okay."

After asking him how exactly she was supposed to do a flip turned into him looking up videos online on his phone, then he decided that they should start with something simple like a handstand. When she asked if he was capable of that, Adrien excitedly clapped his hands and said that they should find out.

He fell over in seconds.

"Lame," he muttered, standing up and trying again, that time against the wall so he could use it as a crutch.

His face turned red when he tried to hold himself up by his hands, his body resting on the wall. If he didn't have the support, he would've wobbled and fallen in a matter of seconds again.

Being supportive, Marinette clapped her hands to cheer him on.

It made him laugh instead, and he ended up sprawled on the floor, his t-shirt riding up exposing his skin to the bare floor.

And as he was still on the floor, Marinette crouched down and patted his head in sympathy. "You tried."

He sniffed, cheek pressed against the floorboards. "I really did."

She was better than him at handstands, but she failed the backflip.

Adrien cheered for her anyway, making enough noise for his father to come down and ask them to be quiet.

-x-

Alya demanded that they grab coffee before they had to go back to school.

Marinette met up with her bundled up in a new scarf that Adrien had gotten her, knitted hat firmly on her head without a worry of it coming off because of the wind, and her treasured gloves that she could turn fingerless when she needed to.

Alya looked like a disgruntled blob in her coat.

The fur around the hood looked hilarious when it was up with her holding it close around her face, trying to stay warm against the cold wind, and by the time they'd made it into their chosen café, Alya's glasses had flecks of snow on the lenses.

"I hate winter," Alya complained.

"I think I hate it as much as summer," she replied with a shrug, looking up at the menu and and trying to pick what sounded appealing. There was a lot of sweet things, so the thought of getting the most indulgent and sending a picture to Adrien to make him complain he missed it seemed like fun. "Been having fun with your family?"

Alya's family had come to stay with her for Christmas, unlike the previous year, and it meant that her home was packed full of too many people and she had a cousin sleeping on an inflatable mattress on her floor.

"There's no privacy whatsoever," Alya muttered bitterly. "And I'm pretty sure someone stole my favourite blanket. I can't find it anywhere."

Although Alya's words were filled with fondness for her family for the most part, Marinette did wonder what it was like to have so many people. The closest she had to that was when she'd lived in the abandoned warehouse with Kim and other children, but there had been none of that closeness that Alya recounted.

Alya finding out about her past—if it could even be classed that, as she technically was still homeless and crashing at Chloé's—meant that it had to be brought up more. Alya wanted her to talk about it, but when she'd clammed up and refused to, Alya had taken the route of prodding gently, asking a few questions before backing off and letting her bring it up herself.

It was like when they'd first started talking.

Alya was pushy, but she was trying to be respectful.

It was when they'd sat down with their drinks, a piece of cake each that they were planning to share, that she got the feeling of wrongness. Unlike when she'd first realised what it meant, she didn't immediately look around and try to locate where it was coming from—it was pointless.

Marinette knew, but she couldn't tell with her eyes.

She wondered if she'd unlock that if she killed more demons.

And when she'd said that aloud to Adrien, he'd laughed and hit her with a pillow, saying that she couldn't phrase it like a game mechanic.

There was no Adrien with them. It was before noon so he was most likely still asleep, blissfully unaware of the drink filled with whipped cream and sprinkles that she'd sent him, so it meant that Alya's guard was down.

Marinette took a sip of her drink, licking the cream from her upper lip. "There's a demon nearby."

Alya almost spilled her drink from snapping up in surprise. "Eh?"

"Don't know where," she clarified with a shrug. "But I thought you'd like to know?"

Alya squinted. "That sounded like a question."

"It was." She laughed. "I just—I know I'm not exactly the best person to say this, but they aren't like... completely evil? When Adrien's not around, they're like any other person."

Confusion was the best way to describe Alya's expression. "Why would you say that?"

She tilted her head. "What?"

"They're—" Alya cut herself off, whipping her head around to see if anyone was nearby before moving her chair closer, lessening the distance between them. "With what you do, how can you say that?"

"Alya," she started slowly with a frown. "I literally live with one."

"But you... you _kill_ them," Alya whispered, going as far as to lean towards her with her hands on the table. "Why are you trying to convince me they're not so bad when you—you do that?"

"I don't like anyone," Marinette pointed out. "You've said that yourself."

Alya looked lost. "Is that really the same thing?"

"You've probably interacted with one before," she told her quietly. "It's not like they're monsters walking around. I'm only doing what I have to to keep Adrien safe."

"Would you still do it?" Alya blurted. "If—if Adrien wasn't here?"

That was a question, wasn't it?

"I don't know," she murmured, honest. "It's all I really know."

And as Alya stabbed her piece of cake with the little fork they'd each been provided with, she whispered, "That's sad."

Marinette hummed. "Is it?"

"Yeah." Alya shoved some cake in her mouth, continuing to talk before she swallowed. "Your life belongs in, like, some sad novel. It shouldn't be real."

She shrugged. "It doesn't bother me any more."

"Well, it bothers _me_," Alya muttered, cutting the piece of cake in half to leave the other side for her. "You're nice. You deserve nice things."

Marinette did the same, making it so Alya's piece had most of the icing. "Thanks?"

"Don't thank me," Alya grumbled, lifting up her mug and swirled it dangerously by moving her hand in a circular motion instead of using the provided spoon. "If I didn't want that for you, I'd be a shit friend."

All Marinette could say to that was, "You're a good friend."

"Good," Alya said with a frown. "If I'm not, fucking kick me."

She laughed loudly. "You're giving me permission for that?"

"_Yes_."

The subject of demons wasn't dropped. Though Alya avoided saying the word outright so they could talk louder, instead of having to lean over and practically whisper in her ear, she was asking again for any clues that would help her be able to identify one.

Other then the fast healing and lack of acne if they were posing as a teenager, Marinette couldn't give her anything more.

"Lame," Alya complained.

She rolled her eyes.

Alya was putting off going back to her home and spending even more time with her family—as they weren't set to leave for another few days—so she dragged her around the shops without the intent of spending much money. Marinette humoured her, pointing out random things in the windows for them to inspect, and at one point, they'd gone into a second-hand store and started inspecting the clothes that were on sale.

At one point, Alya gestured to her head and asked, "Do you still?"

Marinette stared.

With a huff, Alya stamped her foot and exclaimed, "You know what I mean!"

"Oh," she said, letting out a laugh. "Yeah, still. They might work around here?"

"So fucking many," Alya muttered under her breath, wide-eyed and in disbelief. "That's so weird, isn't it? If I had super strength, I'd break into a fucking bank or something. Make the most of it, you know?"

She snorted. "Pretty sure that happened back in the day."

Alya laughed. "Sounding like an old lady now, are you?"

"If my wisdom makes me old, that's a price I must pay," she proclaimed, deadpan, placing a hand over her heart. "I'd rather be old than stupid, like you."

The response she got to that was a middle finger raised up.

Marinette laughed loudly.

It was when they were deciding to part with the sun starting to set early she got a headache. As they waited for the lights to change colour to cross the street, Marinette peered at the people on the opposite side of the road, noticing a woman that was scowling before she became aware of the sudden throbbing in her head. It wasn't enough to cause her to feel nauseated, but the pulse was frequent and angry.

She breathed out slowly, pressing her palm against her temple, as though it would get it to stop.

"Have some painkillers!" Alya said as her good-bye, waving wildly as she was walking away. "The good shit, if you've got it!"

Chloé had stocked up on drugs for her. All Marinette had to do was provide the money and Chloé had gone into the pharmacy in her older skin, choosing the strongest stuff that was available to get rid of the ache.

As nice as it was healing from broken bones over night, the pain was still terrible.

She hadn't had to dip into the medicine since suddenly realising how tough her skin was.

With that, Adrien had pointed out that she wouldn't be able to get vaccinated any more because the needle wouldn't be able to get into her, then he'd taken it back when he realised that she really hadn't gotten ill in a long time.

He did, though.

Marinette had brought him some medicine from her own stash, not realising how drowsy it made him. He fell asleep within half an hour of when she came by to visit in the evening, and she'd awkwardly tugged him towards the bed and tucked him in.

It felt very domestic, as much as the scenes in the films they saw.

She wondered whether she'd ever get to experience living with him.

It would be the healthiest setting for her.

The headache was gone in the morning, thankfully.

Adrien doted on her, asking how she was feeling, whether he was talking too loud on the phone, and constantly checked on her throughout the day. He was still lounging in his bed, too lazy to get dressed and go downstairs despite how hungry he was. She wasn't even surprised at that point, not even when it was late afternoon and he'd only left his bedroom to go the toilet once.

She liked how easily pleased he was.

Adrien didn't constantly want to go out. When she checked it wasn't just because he knew what danger he could be in, he replied that he'd always preferred to stay home and read or play games, reminding her that's why his parents shoved him into different lessons over the summer.

He was at the age where he could choose what to do.

It was almost always staying in bed.

His parents had figured out that if they didn't _invite_ her for dinner, they could cook food without her being aware of it, putting a plate down in front of the two of them with smiles.

It was entrapment.

Adrien's smile whenever she joined him at the table was enough to make her stay.

Sometimes, one of his parents sat down with them, but for the most part, there wasn't a repeat of the awkward family dinner from his birthday. His parents had come to the conclusion that she was skittish, clammed up when they cornered her with questions, so they barely ever spoke to her at the same time to avoid overwhelming her.

"They think you're like Plagg when he was a kitten," Adrien joked.

She bit down on his hand for that.

He laughed.

A headache came again when she was with Nino.

He'd called to ask whether she wanted to hang out together, and she didn't say no. While they were friends, it was rare for it to be just the two of them. She was more comfortable with Alya, and he was closer to Adrien, so it made sense.

Nino wasn't that awkward with her.

It turned out the only reason he was out of the house was because his parents said that he needed to socialise. Alya was too preoccupied with her family, and Nino said that if he went over there, he'd just have to introduce himself over and over and feel terribly out of place the whole time.

She understood his decision to call her, then.

When they were in a store with Nino holding up two different hairbands, trying to decide which Alya would prefer more and constantly asking her opinion, that the feeling back came in her head.

She didn't tell him.

Nino settled on the red one.

After getting a text from Adrien saying he was up and the two of them were okay to come over, they started to cross a park to start in the right direction. Pausing by a bench, Nino called his parents to tell them where he was going, while Marinette fiddled with her hat, adjusting how her hair was sitting underneath it.

Something hard hit the back of her head.

With a noise of surprise, she turned around to see where it had come from, only to be hit in the face by a snowball.

She spluttered, trying to get the sudden cold off of her face with her gloved hand.

It was the laughter that she recognised first.

Chloé was standing there, tossing another snowball in the air before catching it, clearly raising her eyebrows in response to being spotted before she lifted up her free hand, wiggling her fingers as a greeting.

"Fuck off!" Marinette exclaimed, her choice of words perhaps a bit too crude for children that were walking by. Rubbing at her face again, hating the wet feeling that was still there, she glowered from the short distance between them. "Why are you even _here_?"

"I was going to buy some new heels, but this is so much more fun," Chloé remarked, still tossing the snowball in the air, making no move to throw it at her. "Aren't you going to introduce me to your little boy-toy there?"

Her stomach tightened at that.

Nino had his phone to his ear still, but he was staring at Chloé with an expression that could only be classed as horror. And as quickly as Chloé had said that, he turned away, saying to his parents that he had to go and that he'd tell them when he got to Adrien's safely—

Those two parts of her life weren't supposed to collide, not again.

She'd barely cared about Alya before.

But Nino had shown her kindness, had tried to guide her when she was lost and wasn't up-to-date with modern slang or games, and he'd accepted her regardless of the sudden traits she'd started to develop.

Marinette stepped in front of him.

It didn't do much when he was almost as tall as Adrien, seeming to tower above her despite the protective stance.

Chloé's smile widened, showing her teeth. "Well?"

"Nino," she said, gesturing behind her with her thumb. "You happy now?"

"I'm sure the boy can talk for himself," Chloé started, letting the snowball fall on the floor as she took a step forward, straightening her back and correcting her posture. "Right?"

It was posturing.

Wasn't it?

Chloé didn't act like that when they met anyone else. She'd either be rude or charm them by flirting, but it wasn't anything like this.

"I—hi," Nino blurted out, reaching up and adjusting his hat, showing his nerves. "Nice to meet you?"

"You're a kept secret, you know," Chloé said, tilting her head and looking at him with a smirk. "Marinette doesn't like to tell me about her friends."

"Like you actually care," she muttered. "What do you want?"

Chloé laughed. "To say hi, like I said."

"Great, you've said it," she replied, rolling her eyes. "We're leaving now. Bye."

In a move that she wasn't expecting, Nino stepped out from behind her, voice cracking as he asked a bit too loudly, "You're Chloé, right?"

"I am." Chloé's smile didn't reach her eyes. "What of it?"

"I... I wanted to say thank you," Nino stated, not shying away from her gaze. "For—for taking in Marinette or whatever. That's pretty cool."

Chloé just raised her eyebrows.

Marinette wanted to bury her face in her hands in frustration.

Realising that there wasn't going to be an answer to that, Nino grew flustered, fiddling with his hat, clearly lost on what to do in that situation.

Taking pity on him, Marinette asked, "Anything else?"

"What have you been telling them about me, Marinette?" Chloé questioned. From knowing her for so long, she could tell there was no threat in her voice, and she didn't flinch away when Chloé stepped forward and took her chin in her hands, forcing her to look up to meet her gaze. "That's fucking rude, don't you think?"

She slapped the hand away. "I'm not singing your praises, if that's what you're wondering."

"Oh, good," Chloé said with a laugh. "Wouldn't want to think too highly of me, yes?"

"Fuck off already, dude," she complained, tilting her head to gesture to Nino beside her. "We're meeting up later, aren't we? I can't spending every moment with you."

"I'm going to break your arm."

She snorted. "Try me."

It didn't occur to her that Nino had never heard her talk to way to anyone but Adrien. She was comfortable with him and Alya, though it wasn't on the level of playful threats.

Maybe it was different when the one threatening her was a demon.

Nino reached out and gently clutched her arm, making her jump in the process from the sudden touch, and tugged her back. And when he spoke, his voice cracked from nerves. "I—please let us go."

"Oh," Chloé breathed, eyes lighting up when she realised that the protective stances had been swapped. "You know."

"He doesn't know shit," Marinette interjected, the tell-tale sign of her lying obvious to even her. "People can see us, Chloé."

To that, Chloé rolled her eyes. "I'm not going to slaughter your little friend."

"You're doing a good job of making him think you are," she muttered, shrugging out of Nino's hold. "Did you come over here to torment him or what?"

"I wanted to see who you're wasting your time with," Chloé corrected, brushing her long hair over her shoulder with a graceful push of her hand. "Clearly, you're fucked in the head if you're protecting this guy."

She frowned. "He's a friend."

"He's literally shaking."

"It's cold," she lamely defended. "And you're scaring him."

"Am I?" That made Chloé's smile turned proud. Then, she went as far as to look at Nino and wink. "Good to know that your friends have no backbones, then."

The situation was so ridiculous that she had to laugh.

Chloé had never expressed a want to meet her friends. It was understandable; they were children compared to her age. Marinette knew that she was only liked because her morals were messed up from her childhood, and the empathy she'd failed to build had made their friendship better the more they spent time together.

After all, she doubted any other human would be perfectly okay with Chloé murdering someone in their sleep and then taking the food out of their fridge.

Nino was completely out of his comfort zone.

Of all the things he'd heard about Chloé, Marinette might have failed to mention how much she loved to rile her up.

"Everyone pales in comparison to you," she sarcastically told her.

Chloé's laughter wasn't forced.

Then, someone was approaching them. It was a man with a blank expression, not saying anything as he came to stand beside Chloé, blatantly staring at her and waiting for something to happen.

Chloé scowled. "What the fuck do you want?"

The man didn't say anything.

And as Chloé straightened up, a clear sign that she wanted to pick a fight in the middle of the park, Marinette sighed and stepped forward, pushing Chloé away as she hissed, "You are in _public_."

"I can publicly kick his ass," Chloé retorted.

"I don't have the money to bail you out of jail," Marinette shot back, giving her another shove to get her point across. "You've already scared my friend. Fucking leave."

Chloé glared. "You're paying for dinner."

She threw her hands up in exasperation. "Fine!"

And with that, Chloé walked off with that sour expression still on her face, her heels clicking with every step. Marinette thought it was impressive that she wasn't falling over from the leftover snow, let alone worried that her shoes didn't have enough grip to walk around for a prolonged period of time.

The man was still there.

He was watching Chloe walk away, standing there stiffly in a suit that didn't have a coat on top, and the lack of red on his skin meant that he hadn't been outside in the cold weather for long.

Sharing a puzzled look with Nino, she walked around him, set on leaving without exchanging any words with the stranger.

"Why would you call for help if you're not in danger?" the man asked, voice hoarse.

And when she turned back, she could see he was only staring at Nino.

Nino mirrored her confusion, blurting out, "What?"

With a sigh, the man ran his fingers through his hair, shaking his head. "Do not waste our time again."

It _couldn't_ be—

Angels weren't seen.

But they could be called, couldn't they? If a human was in danger, they could ask for help, hoping to be heard from above.

Nino knew what Chloé was.

He'd been in the know the entire time, terrified and nervous, going as far as to try and separate the two of them to try and protect her.

"Angel," she stated, no emotions showing in her voice. "That's what you are, isn't it?"

The man tilted his head.

The pounding in her head was coming back. It wasn't the sense of something wrong, no developing sense that would warn her that an angel was around to match the other one; rather, her eyes stung, the headache developing as she saw the man look at her curiously.

"You weren't the one to call," he said.

It was hard to swallow.

This was what she wanted, wasn't it?

But she didn't know what to say.

Words were hard to come by.

There was so much she wanted to say, to ask, but in a blink of an eye, the man had disappeared. She whipped her head around, trying to see where he'd walked off to, but there was no sign of him.

Beside her, Nino asked quietly, "Where did he go?"

That was all the confirmation she needed that she wasn't going mad.

She was angry at herself.

-x-

Chloé didn't believe her about the man being an angel.

She pointed out that Chloé had never seen one before, insisting that she couldn't know on sight if someone was one if she didn't recognise the man immediately. There hadn't been anything other-worldly about him; middle-aged, plain, and the only strange part had been that he wasn't dressed for the weather.

Nino had been rattled.

They'd made it to Adrien's before he'd fully realised what had happened.

Marinette was still mad.

It was a chance she probably wasn't going to get again. When she expressed that to Adrien, lamenting how she'd clammed up, all he did was softly brush her hair out of her face and ask if she wanted some of his weak painkillers for her headache.

She said yes.

After that, she went on the assumption that humans had to know what they were up against, somehow. A demon could be a slip of the tongue, an insult or fleeting thought that wasn't fully proven if they weren't exposed to the supernatural world—so, maybe, that was how they managed to get summoned sometimes.

No angel had ever come for her and scolded her for wasting their time.

With that thought in mind, the next time she had a demon tied up—a wash cloth shoved in his mouth when he'd momentarily passed out, complete with tape covering it—she crouched down, asking for help in her head.

Surely, she'd done that before. When she was young and inexperienced, terrified that the woman she'd thrown off a building had come back up and tried to hurt her—

No one came.

So, after ten minutes had passed, she said aloud, "Help me."

The demon continued to struggle.

Frustrated, she shouted it, looking up at the ceiling as though it would have the answers that she wanted.

But—

What did she want?

Adrien was the one she wanted to protect, but she couldn't do that without _knowing_. An angel wasn't going to tell her anything, were they?

And from what she'd seen in that brief moment, they didn't need to move to disappear.

That caused her stomach to twist in knots.

The unknown was what she hated.

It was what had kept her on the streets as a kid, hurting her knees as she ran after Nice Lady, keeping away from strangers and shying away from anyone that tried to talk to her.

The headache had stayed since that day in the park.

It wasn't like when her sense was developing; it couldn't be drowned out with music, the pounding demanding and angry behind her eyes, and she took any painkillers that she could, snappy and irritated with the days that followed.

Chloé laughed off the insults.

Adrien was sympathetic, saying that she didn't have to come over if she was in pain.

It was lucky that they still had a few days off before they had to get back to school. She didn't think she could sit through lectures for hours on end, sitting in one spot as the teacher droned on while her pulse in her head was so loud.

Since Nino went to bed the earliest out of all of them, Marinette called Alya.

"I'm sorry, I don't think I heard you correctly," Alya said, incredulous. "You want me to _what_?"

The encounter with Nino wasn't a secret, of course. Adrien had been filled in first, and she'd left to let Adrien explain it all because of her headache. The conversation must've gone well because Nino sent her a heart emoji later on, his way of saying that they were okay.

So, she wasn't sure why the proposal wasn't being so well received.

"Call an angel for me," she all but demanded.

Alya spluttered, "Why don't _you_ do it?"

"I don't think it works for me," Marinette admitted, stabbing her sword into the demon's chest for balance as she stood up. "I've been trying for almost an hour and no one's appeared. So, either they're ignoring me, or I've been unlucky for, like, six years."

The reply she got verged on the edge of sounding strangled. "Why are you asking me?"

"I don't know how it works," she confessed in a whisper, hating that fact. "But—maybe if I give you this address and you just think... I don't know? Ask for help because a demon's going to kill you?"

Alya grumbled, "I'm not going to have to look in the mirror and say a name three times, am I?"

"No?" Marinette replied, confused. "Why would you?"

"Forget it." Alya sighed.

There was a lull in their conversation.

Marinette focused on the demon below her that had stopped struggling, finally given up on trying to get free of the bandalore.

Then, Alya broke it to quietly ask, "You sure I'm not going to get killed if one actually gets summoned?"

"Unless Adrien's with you, no."

Alya's laugh was shaky. "Reassuring."

"Thank you," she murmured. "For this. It—it means a lot that you're willing to do this."

"I'm getting some serious best friend points for this," Alya announced. "Give me the address."

That required her having to peek out the front door to see what number the house was. She was quick about it, finding that the bandalore's string extended, allowing her to get as far as she needed to without resistance, and her tone was almost gleeful as she reported the information to Alya.

"Is it working?" Alya asked.

"No," she denied, looking around to see whether anyone else was in the room. "No one's here."

"Maybe I need to, like, clasp my hands and shit," Alya theorised. "Hang on, let me try and balance my phone on my ear—"

It clattered to the floor.

Instead of picking it up, Alya tried to pray like that, reciting the exact address that Marinette had given her—she'd wrote it on a note to remember—but when a few minutes had passed and nothing had happened, Alya tried to say it aloud instead.

Her frustration continued to build.

"Sorry, dude," Alya apologised, genuinely sounding like she cared. "Looks like it's a failure. Maybe I need to actually see a demon to make it happen?"

To rectify that, Marinette sent her a picture of Chloé.

It still failed.

"What if I send a picture of this guy?" she asked.

"...What guy?"

She'd forgotten to mention that she actually had a demon tied up. There was some blood visible from where she'd hurt him beforehand, and the picture she took had the taped over mouth with blood splattered on his neck some, but it was relatively tame.

Alya still shrieked when she saw it.

"You said it was okay!"

"I just—I wasn't prepared, okay?" Alya complained, talking quickly. "That's—that's the demon?"

She breathed out slowly. "Yeah."

"Right," Alya whispered. Then, with a stronger voice, she continued on to say, "Right, yes. He's the demon that needs to die because he's—he's threatening me, yeah? I need help."

With the bandalore twisted around her wrist to keep it in place, she did better than Alya at balancing her phone on her shoulder as she idly braided her loose hair. There was always the option to turn on the television to pass the time, but the remote wasn't anywhere that she could see.

"Is it working?" Alya asked.

She breathed out noisily. "Pray harder."

"I'm _trying_," Alya replied, petulant. "I don't know what I'm doing! I'm terrible at following instructions. Have you ever seen me build anything? No, you haven't. I cried and invited Nino over so he built my chair for me last time."

She asked, "Are you crying now?"

"No," Alya said. "...Think that would work?"

"Maybe?" she theorised, thoughtful. "Not sure if Nino was crying or anything before, but I wasn't really paying attention to him."

"Too busy making eyes at your demon friend, yes," Alya agreed, ever-so-casually. "I'm a great actor. I'll just... pinch myself so I start to cry. That'll work, right?"

She snorted. "I don't think so."

"I'm not going downstairs to get an onion for this," Alya shot back, sounding exasperated. "This clearly isn't working. You could always try Nino again? Unless you think that dude's going to basically tell him to fuck off."

They weren't successful in the end.

Alya went to sleep after wishing her luck, and Marinette stole a can of drink out of the demon's fridge after his ashes were all over the floor. She'd made sure that his front door was locked before leaving through a window, sliding it closed and covering her tracks.

Chloé called her a dirty snake when she saw the blood on Marinette's hands.

Marinette scoffed. "I can't always call you!"

"You've betrayed me for the last time," Chloé said, narrowing her eyes. "I'll get you for this."

As it turned out, that meant that when Marinette was coming out from the bathroom after showering, she was hit in the head with something hard. She startled, hitting the wall with her shoulder, and when she looked down to see what had clattered to the floor, she saw a knife.

She kicked it. "What if that hit me?"

"It did," Chloé gleefully replied. "You're bleeding."

Her forehead had a cut that had a small bit of blood dripping down her brow. It wasn't as much as a thrown knife should've caused.

Since demonstrating how tough her skin was, Chloé was finding a lot more joy in being physical with her.

A knife thrown to her face was added to a long list of abuse that she wouldn't have tolerated from anyone else. Chloé had been somewhat gentle with her when she'd been breakable—leaving only bruises instead of broken bones with her touches—but that had changed since.

Chloé liked to manhandle her.

She figured it must've been nice not having to hold back any more.

As Chloé picked the knife up from the floor, tossing it before catching the handle with ease, she suggested, "The offer's still there to teach you this."

Suspicious, Marinette narrowed her eyes. "You'd just want to throw them at me."

"Well, yes," Chloé said with a grin, not trying to deny that fact. "That's part of the deal, of course. It has to be fun for me."

It sounded dangerous—

And fun.

"You know what?" Marinette started, a fond smile creeping on her lips. "Why not?"

Their kitchen knives got a lot more use than before.

It wasn't that she was suddenly good at everything. Marinette was as terrible at drawing as she was before, her handwriting grew sloppy after writing for more than a few minutes, but she improved at other things.

With Adrien's supervision—and cheering—she managed a backflip after two weeks.

He was far more excited than she was when it happened.

And along with that, she improved at throwing knives.

Chloé had ordered dart boards so they wouldn't ruin the walls too much. Instead of investing in the actual knives that were meant for such things, they continued to use the kitchen ones, betting money on who could get the highest score by the end of the evening.

She never thought that would be apart of her life, but it was.

It was nice.

The headache became almost constant.

As she'd predicted, it was unbearable during classes. The plus side was that Adrien was always beside her, offering his notes and helping her through it. He didn't force her to sit with the rest of their class-mates at lunch, instead kissing her cheek and promising to meet her outside their next classroom so she could sit in the library and stare at the same sentences for minutes on end, trying to deal with the pounding in her head.

It didn't make sense, did it?

Marinette couldn't get hungover.

She couldn't get sick any more, that was proven when she'd gone over a year without so much as her eyes running from too much pollen in the air. While Adrien had gotten sick a few times, his colds always resulting in him being drowsy from the medicine, she'd been fine all throughout.

He'd kissed her before when his throat was hurting.

His parents had asked whether she was okay for that, surprised when she didn't catch it.

She accepted it as a new quirk.

The thought of not getting sick wasn't a bad one. Sure, it was as strange as all the others things that had happened to her—but who was she to say another development didn't make as much sense as the others?

To her, it was all absurd.

Adrien proposed that she should dress up and be a superhero.

She'd laughed until the sounds escaping her were wheezes, tears prickling in the corners of her eyes.

He made it worse when he starting drawing out outfits for her, saying that a pop of colour would draw attention to her eyes.

She made a point of wearing her pink shirt the next day.

While she was waiting for Chloé to appear, Marinette had plucked the wallet out of the pocket of the demon she had restrained, inspecting the contents and nosing around to see if there was anything worth stealing. The demon was one that Chloé had noticed at a rival company of her own, and she needed them out of the way to get a deal to go through.

Marinette didn't know much about her job, but she wasn't about to turn that down.

The headache was still there, dully throbbing and being a nuisance with every passing moment. She was trying to ignore it by focusing on her tasks, but when all she could do was wait by the open window for Chloé to visit, there wasn't much to do.

It was when she'd been about to pluck the cash out that the pain grew worse.

She winced, blackness appearing in her eyes, and she quickly lifted her palm up to rub into her eyes, trying to ground herself with a different kind of pain.

"_We're not supposed to! Stealing is bad! I'll get you in trouble._"

It was a fleeting thought, a voice that she couldn't recognise ringing in her head before it disappeared as quickly as it came.

She blinked, bewildered.

The headache didn't stop.

She pocketed the money—because when had she ever passed it up? Marinette had no income other than her wandering hands, and she wasn't about to rely on anyone else for it.

Adrien had been the only one to try and straighten her out, but that didn't last long after he started to understand her. He'd accepted that part of her life.

If he hadn't, it wouldn't have changed anything other than adding some awkwardness to their relationship. Marinette didn't have any family members to live off of, her papers were entirely forged, and the only way to right all of that would've been to admit to it all and contact child services.

She still counted as that, didn't she?

Marinette had made it until she was sixteen just fine.

She didn't tell anyone about what she'd heard. And in the days that followed, she'd almost managed to convince herself that she'd imagined it in the first place. After all, what other reason was there for it to appear?

It was pushed aside, forgotten, added to the growing pile of oddities that she'd collected.

And yet, when she stole a woman's bag on her way home, taking out the wallet and other valuables before discarding it on a random street, right in a puddle, it came back.

"_You took my teddy when I wasn't looking last week! That's stealing and—and I'll tell them, so you'll have to say sorry in front of everyone_."

There was no memory attached to it, no image in her mind to match the unfamiliar voice that was ringing in her head. All Marinette could do was stand there in a sort of daze, confused and lost on why it had come for the second time.

Without the context, she was confused.

Any children that had been around her when she was younger weren't friendly with her. They kept with their families and stayed away, leaving her to spend any of her time with Nice Lady.

Marinette had no recollection of being taught that stealing was wrong.

To her, it was the exact opposite.

When she opened up to Adrien about hearing voices—not plural, but still a bad sign—he didn't call her crazy. He'd taken her hand when she'd explained it, pressing a kiss to each of her fingertips before saying that he believed her.

That meant more than she could describe.

"Maybe it's from your childhood?" he suggested, lazily running his fingers through her hair from where she had her head on his lap. "I mean, I don't really remember mine that much? But that's normal, isn't it? If I remembered every single moment, I think my head would explode."

She frowned. "I don't think so."

"Well," he started, voice as soft as his touch. "You said they sound young, right? And talking about toys?"

With her eyes closed, she adjusted to be more comfortable, pressing her cheek further against his soft pyjama bottoms in the process. "That doesn't mean anything."

"Hey, let's not discard the theory immediately," Adrien responded, pulling the blanket draped over her further up, essentially tucking her in against him. "Maybe you had a friend that wanted you to be good or something. That's not too far-fetched, is it?"

"I didn't have friends," she murmured, honest. "You were my first one. You and—and that other girl? The one that you hated."

"I didn't hate anyone," he muttered. She was sure if she opened her eyes, he'd be pouting about that. "Sometimes things come back when they're triggered, you know? I had some candy I hadn't had for _years_ the other day and I remembered the time some kid stole it from. It was wild how many emotions I felt in that short of time."

She let out a laugh. "Traumatic memory?"

"Oh, it was horrible," he confirmed solemnly. "But now I have you to protect me, so my candy is safe."

"I'm going to eat it."

"Maybe you'll put on some weight if you do," he teased.

It wasn't supposed to be spiteful. She knew that he'd never intended to upset her, so it was curiosity that she asked, "Do you think I'm underweight?"

"I'm not really the person to ask about that, am I?" he replied, pushing her hair out of her forehead, his soothing touches very welcome. "You are thin, yes, but I've seen you eat."

She snorted. "I've tried so hard to keep my eating a secret."

"You don't look like you're going to fall over any minute," he assured her.

With her eyes still closed, she lifted up her hand to touch his on her head. He understood her intentions and linked their fingers together, a familiar and comforting move. "I'm not too thin?"

"I think you look perfect," Adrien whispered.

Her face felt hot. "Okay."

"Okay," he echoed, smile clear in his voice.

"Don't mock me," she muttered, squeezing his hand tightly.

With a laugh, his thumb started to trace patterns into her skin. "I'd never."

"Good."

"It's happened twice, right?" Adrien quietly asked. "The—the maybe memory thing?"

She sighed. "Yes."

"Both while you were stealing, yes?" And without waiting for her to confirm that, he continued on to suggest, "We could try and trigger it? That's a thing. We could make it a thing and do it. I'll supervise and make sure you won't get arrested."

Opening her eyes, she looked up at him blearily. "You don't support stealing."

"I do if it's for a good cause," he proclaimed, smiling as he used his free hand to touch the end of her nose. "Helping you out is always good."

She wrinkled her nose. "Is it?"

"Yes, because I love you," Adrien said without hesitation, dimples showing on his cheeks. "So how could it be bad?"

And what was she supposed to say to that?

It turned out that Adrien's idea of crime was on a lower scale than hers. When he'd first suggested it, she thought it meant he'd be there when she picked someone's pocket in the evening, but that wasn't the case at all.

Rather, he waited until they were alone in his home to bring it up again. Since he'd turned seventeen, his parents had trusted them both to be alone more; a mixture of getting to know her more as his girlfriend and Adrien proving his was mature with his actions (other than the time his father had come downstairs from a loud noise, just to find Marinette sprawled on the floor from trying to do a backflip with Adrien clapping and trying to say that she'd done a great job).

"Okay," he said suddenly, standing up and offering a hand out to pull her up.

She followed him until they were standing in the hallway outside of his parents' bedroom.

"What are we doing here?" she questioned, giving him a strange look.

Adrien's smile showed his teeth. "Stealing!"

"We're _what_?"

He opened the door with a dramatic flair, going as far as to bow and gesture for her to walk in first. For all the times she'd been there with his parents knowledge, the bedroom door had always been closed when she walked past to go to the bathroom.

She felt terribly out of place as they walked inside.

"What's going on in your head?" she questioned, taking in their surroundings.

The room was as clean as the rest of the house.

There was a vanity table with a small wicker basket on it where jewellery was kept. Adrien settled down on the stool there, ushering her forward as he proudly pointed to it. "There, this should do it, right?"

"You want me to... steal jewellery from your mother?" she asked, doubtful.

His smile was bright. "Yes."

She stared.

He didn't stop smiling.

"This is a terrible idea," she blurted. "It's—what if she finds out? I'll finally get banned."

"This doesn't even rank number one of my list of terrible ideas," Adrien replied with a carefree tone, waving his hand dismissively. "We can return it later. She's not going to check that until she has to work again Monday, we're good."

She frowned. "Is it stealing if we intend to return it?"

"Oh, true," he agreed, thoughtfully tapping his fingertip against his chin. Then, his expression became gleeful, clearly showing that he'd thought of something that solved their problem. "You'll steal it, I'll return. It's not you doing it then, right? It works."

She squinted. "I don't think that's how it works."

"Well, it is now!" he exclaimed, happily standing up and putting his hands on her shoulders to make her sit on the stool instead. "Now, you've still got your headache, yes?"

With a nod, she muttered, "Yes, the painkillers didn't do anything."

"Maybe you should take a double dose," he mused. "Actually, no. I don't think I can explain away you overdosing on my watch if my parents find you passed out. I'll be branded a terrible boyfriend and exiled because of it."

"...You're not worried that I won't recover?"

With a serious expression, he looked her in the eyes as he stated, "I've come to accept that you'll survive anything."

Marinette sniffed. "Nice to know that you care about me."

"Chloé threw a knife at you yesterday," he said.

"Tell me something new," she deadpanned.

He added on, "It hit your tit."

She pulled a face. "I can't believe you just said tit to me."

"Breast sounded too clinical in my head!" he spluttered, ears turning red as he ran a hand through his hair. "I just—let's forget I said that, yes? Please."

Poking his arm, she proclaimed, "I'll ask why my chest is on your mind later, then."

"Please, don't," he said, slapping her hand away. "Go back to your thieving ways and leave me alone."

Marinette teased, "You're supposed to be the good influence on my life."

"I'm a great influence, thank you," he shot back, crossing his arms over his chest. "No one else makes you smile as much as me, right? That's a good deed right there."

She raised her eyebrows. "Is it?"

"Yes." He nodded his head. "Your smile is a wonderful thing and more people need to see it."

She was sure her smile was a little goofy. "You're sweet."

"And you're stalling," Adrien replied, snapping his fingers before gesturing to the wicker basket. "It's time to be a criminal. Or do you need me to put on some music to get you in the mood?"

Slyly, she remarked, "That's not exactly the mood music I expected from you."

He inhaled audibly. "Inappropriate."

Laughing at his response, she brushed her hair behind her ear as she asked, "Oh, so you can say stuff like that, but I can't?"

He muttered, "Chloé's clearly the bad one here, teaching you stuff like that."

She couldn't help but say, "Well, she did teach me what fisting is."

Adrien stared at her, wide-eyed.

"Yes," Marinette agreed, nodding solemnly. "That was my reaction, too."

"Well." He swallowed, still surprised. "Let's file away that nightmare for later, shall we? We have other criminal activities to focus on first."

Picking up a necklace didn't cause anything to happen.

Marinette shared a helpless look with him, both equally lost on what they were supposed to do while she had a necklace clenched in her hand. While she hadn't been optimistic about the outcome, he seemed more upset about it than her.

So, he gestured for her to try and pick up different things, to try and put them in her pockets to attempt to get a reaction.

"Maybe jewellery isn't the right thing," she mused.

"You're right," Adrien agreed, sudden enthusiasm coming back into his voice. He flashed her a bright smile before he exclaimed, "Steal my cat!"

"...What."

"What?" he said right back, offended from her blank reaction. "Are you trying to tell me you never tried to steal a pet when you were a kid? I refuse to believe that."

She squinted. "Why would I do that?"

He copied her expression, narrowing his eyes. "For love and affection, of course?"

"I've never stolen a cat," she stated.

"Great." Adrien took her wrist in his hand, dragging her along. "Today's the day for that, then. He might still be in the living room."

Plagg was on the sofa, lazing around on one of the decorative cushions. He opened his eyes when they walked into the room, stretching out and leaning into Adrien's touch when he pet him. When Marinette picked him up, he didn't make a fuss, too sleepy to protest to the movements.

She walked out the front door with him.

Nothing happened other than her socks getting wet.

"This is stupid," she muttered, carefully putting Plagg down on the porch.

The cat just stretched out there instead, trying to get comfortable.

"I'm not mad." And as she looked up, Adrien had his hands on his hips, trying to hold back a smile. "I'm just disappointed."

She rolled her eyes. "In yourself, I hope."

"Clearly, your intentions are too pure," he said before letting his smile take over his face, eyes crinkling at the corners in a way that made her want to kiss him. "You need to actually mean the theft, I guess."

"Or I don't want a cat," she retorted.

"You take that back," Adrien threatened, waggling a finger in her direction. "Plagg is the best cat. Anyone would be lucky to have him."

"He's great," she told him, gently pushing his hand back down to his side. "But wouldn't you prefer to keep him away from knives? It's not exactly same around Chloé's lately."

He made a noise of agreement. "Okay, you can't have Plagg."

She patted his shoulder. "Glad we settled that."

-x-

The voice didn't come back when she stole another wallet.

Instead, it was when she was a table with Adrien in the library. He had a book propped up and open to hide the packet of sweets he'd gotten out, carefully trying to take some out without making noise and alerting the librarian that he was going against the rules.

They'd agreed to stay after their classes had finished for the day to work on an essay. Adrien had argued that they could get the research they needed on the internet, but she'd pointed out the library would be quicker because she knew what she was looking for.

And thus, he was busy snacking instead of writing his essay.

"Here," he whispered, gently pushing a piece of candy until it nudged against her hand. "You deserve it for your hard work."

She huffed. "Compared to your no work?"

"I just finished a paragraph," Adrien replied, gesturing towards where he'd applied too much pressure to his last period and smeared the ink when he'd given up. "I'm having a break."

"Thanks for sharing your contraband," she said, popping the sweet into her mouth.

It wasn't him that spoke.

"_I'm going to ruin my dinner and it's going to be absolutely worth it, you crybaby._"

She stopped chewing.

When she told Adrien that she'd heard it, wildly gesturing to her head since she didn't want to talk with her mouth full, he quickly offered her another one when she'd managed to tell him.

It didn't work.

But after that, the triggers didn't make any sense.

There was only once voice, but it changed slightly. Marinette couldn't tell whether it was because of age or emotion since there were no images attached to it, leaving her confused and disorientated whenever the fleeting voice came through her mind.

Adrien suggested it was memory loss.

She didn't feel like she was missing anything unnatural.

It was to be expected that she didn't remember all her childhood. She'd never thought there was a huge gap that was gone, let alone a whole person that apparently scolded her for stealing.

Another came when she was eating across from Chloé at a diner.

"_You'll eat my carrots, right? You always do._"

She stared down at the vegetable as if it had offended her.

When she was in the shower, using expensive shampoo and conditioner that Alya had gifted her for Christmas (a pointed jab that Marinette should take care of her hair more once she'd revealed that she used whatever was cheap at the store), it came through again.

"_Flowers are pretty, aren't they? I can't imagine not having them bloom all year long. They must be sad down there._"

There was no doubt that the constant headache was because of the voice in her head being triggered.

Marinette started writing it down, sending Adrien a copy, much like she'd done with her injuries in the past.

He tried to lighten the mood and joke that maybe she was receiving messages from aliens.

She felt close to crying from frustration some days.

The life she was living was wonderful; something she could've never thought of having with people that accepted her without judgement despite how her actions weren't morally right in other people's eyes. Adrien told her almost daily how much he adored her despite knowing she'd murdered someone the night before, and Alya and Nino had remained her friends regardless of what she did in her free time.

She'd made it herself; stolen the money needed to pay for necessities, suffered through the cold and travelled across the country before staying in Adrien's city—

There had never been someone there, whispering soft things in her ear.

The reality that she could be remembering things she'd shoved aside from her rough childhood felt like a slap in the face.

Marinette thought she was strong, that she'd persevered and flourished despite it.

She was stubborn.

And yet, that voice came again.

"_You're making our hair match again today, aren't you?_"

She clenched her hands into fists.

There wasn't a time where she wasn't suffering from a headache.

The painkillers couldn't dull the pain much.

"We don't have to go out anywhere," Adrien quietly told her, taking her gloved hand into his. "We can turn back and chill at mine instead, you know? It's fine."

"No," she quickly replied, shaking her head. "I—I said we'd do this, right? I'm not backing out now."

"It's just a stupid holiday," he muttered, scuffing his shoe against the pavement. "It's not anything special, okay? Valentine's is just an excuse to makeout in public without being judged."

Marinette raised her eyebrows. "I thought it was to eat chocolate?"

"That, too," he confirmed with a laugh. "For real, I won't be upset if we don't eat some cake."

After taking into account how much noise there could be in a café, she chewed on the inside of her cheek before suggesting, "We could get one to go."

He beamed. "That's a good idea."

They picked a cheap one out from a nearby supermarket. Adrien got the final choice on which flavour since he was the one that preferred sweets more, and she agreed as long as she got to pay half.

He cheated by paying for drinks alone.

His mother welcomed them back into his home with a smile, cooing about how cute it was that they were going to stay in together.

Adrien's ears were red by the time they settled down in his bedroom.

The door was left open.

"Ridiculous," he huffed, setting down two plates and forks on the floor beside him. "We're only trusted when they're not here, clearly."

She snickered.

He made a point of making them tap their drinks together before they were allowed to take the first sip, smiling widely the whole time. Marinette humoured him and asked, "Anything else we have to do very specifically?"

"Yes," he replied, utterly seriously as he nudged her knee with his. "You have to kiss me before you're allowed any cake."

She hummed. "That doesn't sound right."

"It's a new rule," he told her, fondness clear in his tone. "But that doesn't mean it's any less important than all the others. You want to earn your cake, don't you?"

Placing her drink safely on the floor where she wouldn't accidentally kick it, she made a point of thinking over her answer. "Do I?"

"Yes," he insisted, placing his arm around her shoulder and pulling her into a half-hearted hug. "That's what we agreed our date would be, right? Eating cake?"

She poked the end of his nose. "When is the date starting?"

Adrien pouted. "That's not fair."

"It's a real question," she countered, laughing at his dramatic expression. "If the date's eating cake, we're technically not there yet. We're clearly just friends right now."

"You are my _girlfriend_."

"A girlfriend that's cakeless," she teased. "That's not very good now, is it?"

"You're terrible," Adrien murmured, pressing a kiss to her cheek before pulling away, busying himself with getting the store-bought cake. When he realised that he'd forgotten to get a knife, he decided to try and cut it with a fork instead, making a mess and shooting her a glare when she started to laugh at him. "Don't bully me right now. This is hard."

She put her hand over her mouth to try and smother her laughter. "It looks it."

He sniffed. "I'd like to see you try."

"I'll leave it to you," she replied, taking ahold of a plate and holding it out for him to messily plop a slice down onto it. Helpfully, she did the same with the second plate, offering him the nicest-looking one.

And from how he smiled at her fondly, he'd realised what she'd done immediately.

She grinned right back.

After eating his first bite, he had icing smeared on the corner of his lips. Marinette reached out and used her thumb to get it off, pretending to be disappointed as she said, "You're messy."

"Maybe I wanted you to do that for me," he said.

She questioned, "Why?"

"So I can say thank you like this," Adrien murmured, leaning forward until he could press his lips against hers.

Marinette clumsily placed the plate aside, the fork making noise as it surely fell off onto the carpet, before wrapping her arms around his neck, tilting her head up to allow the angle to be easier on them both. She sighed happily against him, able to feel it as he smiled, trailing her fingers through his silky hair and gripping lightly to see how he'd react.

When he made a noise, they separated in surprise.

Adrien's face was red.

She laughed.

"Shut up," he muttered, touching his cheeks with his hands while glaring at her. "This is entirely your fault. I'm not responsible for this _at all_."

"Cute," she said, patting his knee.

"That is not what I want to hear right now at all," he all but whined, leaning back against the bottom of the sofa. "You're supposed to be apologising, not buttering me up with compliments."

She tilted her head with a smile. "But I like complimenting you."

He let his hands fall back down. "And I like my face not burning."

"It was a very pleasant shade of red," she said, trying to keep a straight face. "Really brought out the colour of your eyes."

"I'm still beautiful while embarrassed, of course." He made a point of trying to brush imaginary hair over his shoulder with the back of his hand. "It's my best feature."

She laughed. "Is it?"

"Oh, yes," he confirmed, gesturing to his face that had changed back to his natural skin tone. "Look at me and try and tell me I'm not pretty. You can't."

"You're always pretty," she replied, picking her plate back up and eating a large mouthful of cake.

He beamed. "Thank you."

With a laugh, she remarked, "You should be proud."

"It's a blessing and a curse," he replied, elegantly dipping his head with his eyes closed while he smiled, as though he was interacting with someone fancy. "Thank you for appreciating me. I see why I keep you around now."

"You still look pretty when you forget to brush your hair," she told him.

Adrien puffed his chest out. "It's clearly a style choice."

She laughed. "It suits you well."

"Taking care of your appearance is important," he agreed.

This was the same Adrien that didn't bother to make his bed, didn't change out of his shirt if he spilt food down it while she was there, and stayed in the same pyjamas for longer than necessary because he liked how they felt. She'd seen him in all states—including terribly sick with a cold, nose red and running—and she always thought he looked beautiful when he smiled.

She honestly told him, "You always look great."

"You're trying to make me blush now," he accused, pointing his fork at her. "I'm onto you."

Finishing the rest of her cake with one mouthful, she asked after swallowing, "Why would I do that?"

"You like to tease me," he stated matter-of-factly.

It came out of nowhere.

"_You're always teasing me! You're supposed to be on my side, but it feels like you're picking on me. That's not fair._"

She blinked.

"Marinette?" he questioned, reaching out and gently putting his hand on her shoulder. "You okay?"

"I—yeah," she stuttered out, rubbing her forehead in an attempt to get the headache to lessen. "Had another... thing."

"Oh," he breathed, realisation coming to him quickly. "A thing, yeah."

It didn't escape his notice that she was refusing to call it a memory.

She was still offended by that.

The mood after less was considerably lower.

Adrien sliced her another poorly cut piece of cake, pressing a kiss to her temple before leaving to fetch hot drinks for the two of them.

He came back with painkillers, too.

She kissed him to show how thankful she was.

The flickers were incredibly frustrating.

Per Adrien's suggestion, she searched amnesia online and ended up getting angry.

After deciding that the internet had never solved her problems before, she stubbornly ignored it, trying to shove it out of her mind. The headache was still there and persistent, only disappearing for a while until it came back in full force, and if she hadn't become so unbreakable, she would've banged her head against the wall until she could fall unconscious.

As it turned out, taking the double dose of painkillers didn't do anything either.

She decided not to push it any further than that after the first time she took them, not wanting to make Adrien worry.

He'd looked up all different things to help with headaches; offering her specific foods and tea, going as far as to bring a flask of the drink to school with them, pouring her a cup between classes.

The thought was sweet.

What wasn't was when Adrien had kissed her cheek before going to hang out with their class-mates, saying that he wouldn't be gone for long.

He'd already turned away before it had happened.

"_You won't be gone for long, right? I'll be waiting here until your lesson's done_."

She pressed her palms into her eyes until it hurt.

-x-

Looking in the mirror, Marinette realised that her ribs weren't as visible any more. Her hipbones stuck out a little from the lack of fat down there, but she'd filled out a little compared to how she'd been before.

Her cheeks didn't look cute like Alya's when she smiled, but she didn't look gaunt.

It was an improvement.

And as she stared, noting that her hair had become so long—no longer frizzy and clumped, covered in grease and dirt—she decided that she liked how it looked.

It felt strange to finally admit that she liked one part of herself.

She wondered what it would be like to have Adrien's confidence, to be so sure of himself and know that he looked fine with a wrinkled shirt and his hair a mess, not at all embarrassed to go outside like that.

It wasn't that she hated herself—

Marinette didn't think there was much to like.

It had always been like that.

But since meeting Adrien again, she'd been introduced to nice things, the casual and childish things that she wouldn't have experienced with Chloé. While Adrien would take her to an arcade and teach her how to play each game, Chloé would've been more likely to get Marinette to cause a distraction so she could break the machine and get the money out of it.

They were two different extremes.

Chloé wasn't over complaining that she'd let her friends know about her.

"Is nothing a secret to you, Marinette?" Chloé lamenting, a dramatic flair to her as she finished the rest of her glass of wine. It was an expensive brand, one that she'd said was too good to share. "Soon you'll be telling everyone about what we do."

She huffed. "It was only him."

That was all Chloé needed to know.

"That doesn't make it any better," Chloé shot back, narrowing her eyes. "He tried to _thank_ me."

She snorted. "Did that offend you?"

"Terribly." Chloé poured more wine into her glass, filling it almost to the brim. "I don't need children sucking up to me. I'm not interested."

"I don't think he wanted to date you, if that's what you were worried about," she replied, amused. "He's got a girlfriend."

"Children really are dating just about any age now, aren't they?" Then, with her eyes narrowed in suspicion, Chloé asked, "You're not fucking around, are you? I warned you against that."

The laugh that left her was sincere. "Why would I do that?"

"Well, I question why you waste your time with humans as it is."

"I'm human," Marinette said, a standard response that she'd uttered so many times, but as of late, it was losing meaning.

Chloé hummed. "Sure."

"_That's what being human is about, isn't it? Having goals and dreams._"

She excused herself to the bathroom.

And when she looked in the mirror, taking in the pale colour of her skin and the way she was breathing heavily, the throbbing in her head a constant tune that she couldn't get rid of, she felt tears pricking in her eyes.

She'd never wanted to be normal so much before.

But if the constant feeling of disorientation was what she needed to experience if she wanted to protect Adrien, then that was what she was going to do.

He'd gotten better at being attacked.

Well, better at smothering his emotions until they were safe and he could freely cry without being terrified that the demon was going to hear him and leave from where Marinette was dealing with them. The sturdiness she'd acquired meant that she could stand up after a hard hit, less breakable and not down and injured from a single shove.

She wondered whether she would've fared better by the beach a year ago if she was like she was then.

The element of surprise wasn't all she had any more, was it?

She'd changed, able to protect herself with her own body instead of the weapons she'd been accidentally entrusted with.

Was that something to be proud of?

She wasn't so sure.

But when Adrien checked over her injuries, not shying away from the blood that was splattered across her body, she remembered the reason she was doing it all.

She'd do anything for him.

Adrien knew that.

He used it to his advantage at times; fluttering his eyelashes and asking to compare essays to make sure his was up to scratch, or when he pouted until she gave in and watched the first episode of a new show that he wanted her to see with him.

She loved him.

It wasn't in the healthy way that she'd seen portrayed before—not the way Alya would kiss Nino before stealing his hat, their relationship never experiencing anything beyond petty fights that were bound to happen time to time.

There was a big difference when Marinette was willing to murder for him, wasn't there?

That was before his smile had been directed her way, before he'd pull her into a tight hug. And hold her close.

With every display of affection that was meant for her, that fierce protectiveness grew in a way that she'd never had to deal with before. The way she'd liked him when they were children couldn't be compared any more.

When Adrien had excused himself to the bathroom while the four of them were all together, Alya had snickered and reached out to gently nudge her in the ribs. "You're really gone for him, aren't you?"

Marinette blinked. "What?"

"The way you look at him," was the only explanation she got to that.

If her looking at him was any indication of her feelings, she hoped that Chloé was never there to witness it.

Adrien needed to be her best kept secret.

"_You're not keeping any secrets from me, are you? You're being distant lately._"

The words were getting too advanced for a child.

There was no sense to it, was there? If Adrien's theory that they were memories was correct, another child wouldn't say those things to her. The voice was similar each time, sometimes high-pitched and sounding childlike, while others it became more mature, but she thought they were the same person.

Although she couldn't remember Nice Lady's voice, she knew it wasn't her.

There wasn't anyone she could go to for answers.

She didn't know anything, it was as simple as that.

It infuriated her.

-x-

With the weather warming up, Marinette's leggings got shorter. She kept wearing clothes with zips on them to keep her bandalore in or a small bag she could clip around her chest to keep close, surprised that it had become a fashion statement so she didn't look too out of place, and she splurged by buying a new pair of trainers with Chloé when her last ones started to fall apart.

It was more like Chloé had seen a hole in the heel and threw them in the bin before she could say no.

There was a lot left unsaid between them.

Marinette would be seventeen that year from the papers she'd had forged, and the days were creeping closer to the inevitable where Chloé left.

Chloé said she was only sticking around to embezzle money before forging a new identity, but there was no estimated amount of time given for that. Marinette didn't know when she'd need to try and find a new place to live, let alone how she'd manage that when she didn't have a bank account or any parents on record that would take care of her.

She wasn't going back to Fu.

If it came down to it, she was more suited for living on the streets with her age and experience. Though, she knew if Adrien caught wind that she didn't have anywhere to sleep, he'd tell her to hide in his bedroom at night.

It wouldn't solve her options, but it was an option she could take.

The whispers in her head kept coming.

Sometimes, it was a sentence relevant to her current conversation, though there were more triggers of the voice warning her against the very thing that she was doing.

A good example of that was when she'd sliced a demon's head clean off, kicking them in the chest to cause the body to fall to the floor before piercing the hearts.

It had been a painless experience for her.

"_I'm not proud that I made someone else hurt!_"

And through the increase of pain from her headache, Marinette laughed, touching her bloody hand to her head and laughing until her body shook and her eyes felt wet, sure that the sound was coming from her was on the verge of sounding hysterical.

Whoever it was, they were in the past. She didn't need them, didn't care what they thought—but the fact that everything they were preaching was against what she did made the laughter come out more.

She didn't need an unknown judging her.

Marinette was happy.

Adrien accepted her, and she didn't need anyone else.

She just wanted it to be over.

When she woke up to her alarm, eyes tired and feeling like she'd barely slept enough because Chloé had dragged her out the night before all while knowing she had class the next day, Marinette pressed her face into the pillow when the pain appeared.

"_Without you here to take care of me, I think I would've rotted away already. That's what happens when they die, right? They rot?_"

The only person she'd taken care of was Adrien.

For the first time, she was tempted to take the day off from school. It wasn't good idea, though; letting Adrien go alone was out of the question, and his parents weren't about to let him have a sick day without any signs of him actually being ill.

Adrien took one look at her face and asked, "Bad headache?"

She gave him a grunt as an answer.

His father suggested that she visit the doctor to get it checked out before offering her some painkillers from his bag.

Although they didn't do much, she was grateful.

She had to present her project to the class that day. It didn't go well.

Adrien still encouraged her with a smile, showing her a thumbs up at the end.

She returned it half-heartedly.

After he'd finished his to a much more positive reaction, she clapped quietly as he took the seat beside her.

Adrien nudged her with his elbow. "What would I do without you? You're my personal cheerleader."

"_I don't want to be alone. Without you here, everyone tries to talk to me_."

The smile she gave him in return didn't reach her eyes.

And with summer approaching, Alya tried to convince her to come swimming.

"That's a terrible idea," she immediately replied.

The last time she'd been in around anyone in a swimsuit, Chloé had gotten her eyes crushed. Sure, being around her friends as they went to swim didn't mean the same things would happen, but it was the memory that she wanted to avoid.

As desensitised as she was to death, it was different when it was Chloé.

Adrien had pointed out that they could go to a public pool instead; somewhere inside where they wouldn't be in danger.

She'd pursed her lips.

And yet, somehow, they'd talked her into it. The more they told her, the more it sounded like a stupid idea; Marinette had to leave her belongings in a locker—that they had to pay for, separate to the charge for getting in in the first place—and be without her sword for an extended period of time.

Was she considered pathetic for not wanting to be apart from it?

"You don't shower with it," Adrien told her, poking her cheek. "No one's going to attack me when everyone's visible, you know. And there's cameras in the lobby if someone tries to abduct me if I get changed before you."

There was also the fact that the genders were split up to change in different sections.

He'd turned to look at her with wide eyes. "Please? I feel like I haven't seen Alya and Nino in so long. And it's _hot_."

She frowned. "You saw them last weekend."

He placed a hand dramatically to his forehead. "So long."

Adrien was well aware that she'd do anything to make him happy.

And that was how she'd ended up dragging Chloé along to shop for a swimsuit. The scandalous ones that would be more suited to Chloé were rejected immediately, and there was an awkward moment where Chloé had asked for her brassiere size before realising that Marinette had never bought any new ones, instead continuing to wear the ones she'd bought almost two years ago.

She ended up getting new ones.

At the pool, after they'd paid and split off into the different sections, Alya dragged her into a stall for them both to change together. Alya didn't clam up and get awkward when Marinette took her shirt off and showed the sword she had strapped to her waist, instead asking, "Doesn't that get uncomfortable?"

She shrugged. "I'm used to it."

Alya pulled a face. "A bra is bad enough. I can't imagine having anything else under there."

At first, Marinette stayed at the edge of the pool, sitting down and putting her feet in the water. It was different to the beach where she'd relaxed in the sun with Chloé before they'd gotten distracted, and roof over the pool meant that the sun wasn't glaring down at them and making it overly hot.

Having her feet submerged felt nice.

"Not coming in?" Adrien asked, sitting down in the pool and grabbing her ankles, making it so she had her feet on his shoulders, out of the water and causing her skin to prickle from the sudden cold chill. "You're not worried about getting your hair wet, are you?"

Her brow furrowed. "Why would I?"

He shrugged. "That's why my father never comes in. Says it makes his hair stink."

"If the rest of my body's going to smell like chemicals, why not let my hair match?" she responded, touching the dry strands that she'd pulled into a ponytail. "I'm just—"

"What?" he questioned, tapping an inconstant rhythm into her ankle. "What's up, Marinette?"

Averting her gaze, she fiddled with her swimsuit, tugging it down to try and cover more of her hip. All the options with bikinis didn't seem practical with only strings keeping it together, so she'd turned them down, going for a suit that was in one piece instead.

Chloé hadn't stopped calling her a prude since.

She didn't flinch away when Adrien's hands wandered to her knees, fingertips trailing along her exposed skin. "Come on, you know I wouldn't make fun of you."

She exhaled audibly. "I don't know how to swim."

"Oh," he breathed, surprise clear in his voice. "Is that all?"

"Is that _all_?" Marinette exclaimed, face feeling warm as she looked up at him with narrowed eyes. "It's kind of a big deal when you came here to, you know, _swim_."

"Eh." He waved a hand dismissively. "I just wanted to chill in the water. I've been trying to convince my parents to get an inflatable pool, but they haven't given in yet, so this is the only other option."

Marinette fidgeted, her thighs sticking to the tiles she was sitting on. "You're fine with not swimming?"

"I'm not exactly active, in case you haven't noticed," he replied,

"But." She looked at where Alya and Nino were further down, wading in the water while chatting, barely paying attention to anyone else around them. As soon as Marinette had said she was going to sit for a bit, they'd wandered off together. "Are you sure I'm not—not holding you back?"

"Marinette," he started, threading his fingers through hers and giving her hand a squeeze. "Why _wouldn't_ I want to spend time with you?"

She shrugged.

"I could try and teach you to swim, if you want," he offered, pushing his wet hair out of his face with their joined hands, making her laugh in the process. "I can't promise I'll be any good."

"No, it's okay," she denied with a smile. "I'd probably be shit at it, and I want to avoid that humiliation for now."

"It's not embarrassing to admit you can't do something," Adrien murmured, taking her legs off of his shoulders and putting her feet back into the pool until the water almost went up to her ankles. "There's a lot of things I can't do—like a backflip! And you're really good at that now."

She laughed. "Only because you're living through me."

"Yes," he agreed, pressing a kiss to her knuckles. "So can't you live through me, too?"

Petulantly, she asked, "What's in it for me?"

He laughed. "Me."

She paused for dramatic effect. "I suppose that sounds okay."

Although he didn't teacher how to swim, the afternoon was fun. Marinette eventually submerged her body in the water, only going as far as she could stand, and since Adrien was taller than her, his shoulders weren't in the water when it was touching her chin. She wasn't too comfortable being there for an extended period of time, but he wasn't looking away, staying nearby and offering comfort in the form of hugs and holding her hand, keeping it entirely innocent.

He refused to kiss her.

"You want to scar the children?" he asked, letting out a dramatic gasp. "Is that it, Marinette?"

Her response was to point out where Alya and Nino were kissing in the deep end.

"The disrespect!" Adrien exclaimed. "Let's show them, come on—"

That involved climbing out of the pool together, sneaking down so Adrien could kneel and scoop up some water with his hands before dumping it other their friend's heads. It wasn't a large amount, not when he could barely hold any as it was, but the shocked reaction he got was what he was looking for.

He ran away into the shallow end with her before they could retaliate.

When they'd changed back, walking out into the hallway with dripping hair that definitely did still smell like chemicals, Marinette decided that it wasn't too bad being apart from her sword for a few hours while they were in public.

She wasn't planning to go to the beach any time soon, though.

The invitation came up with Alya's family. Marinette rejected it, saying that she wouldn't feel comfortable stuck in a car with Alya's family for that long.

Alya wasn't upset in the slightest.

"Me, too," Alya said with a sigh.

Nino was the only that agreed to go along.

Instead, Marinette was sat on the edge of Adrien's patio, her feet touching the grass that had been freshly mowed so no daises were left. Adrien returned from his kitchen, leaving the back door open to try and cool it down inside. When he sat down, he gave her the option to pick which ice pop she wanted first.

He bundled up the two wrappers and placed hem under his thigh so they wouldn't fly away. "I think I might be imagining this," he started, lips starting to become blue from the frozen sweet. "But did you used to be scared of cars?"

Marinette scoffed. "Oh, so you remember _that_?"

He seemed excited by her answer. "I was right?"

"I'd never been in one before," she grumbled, taking a bite of her ice pop and regretting it when the coldness caused her teeth to feel painful. "When you left, Aloys always used to walk to the shop with me because I was terrified of it."

"Cute," he cooed, poking her cheek.

She went to bite him.

He pulled his hand back in time to avoid it, laughing loudly.

"Now look at you," he said, eyes crinkling from his smile. "You've grown up so well and overcome your fears."

Marinette huffed. "What about you? Have you overcome any of your fears?"

"No, I'm probably still as much of a pussy as I was before," he said.

His mother's voice came through the open windows. "_Language_!"

Marinette laughed until her face was red.

When they'd calmed down, sticks from their ice pops placed in the wrappers and shoved under his thigh once more to avoid the wind, Adrien quietly asked her, "Do you ever wonder about your parents?"

She shrugged. "Not really."

"Not at all?"

"Maybe when I was younger," Marinette said, leaning back until her back was against the bricks of the patio, staring up at the clear sky above. She had to hold a hand above her eyes to try and block out the sun. "But I don't really care any more? I mean, they clearly didn't care about _me_, so why should I?"

"I think it's sad." His voice was but a whisper. "You're—you're amazing, Marinette. And if they couldn't see that, I feel sorry for them."

There was that part of him that wanted to think the best of people. Adrien felt sad whenever he saw an advertisement for abandoned animals on the television, got upset at the thought that he'd done something to upset anyone else, and he always wanted to help.

He felt too much in comparison to her barely feeling anything at all.

"They don't deserve your sympathy," she told him, meeting his gaze. "They're scum."

"Yeah." His shoulders slumped. "They are."

-x-

Marinette decided she hated the dreams the worst.

They didn't always happen when she was asleep, but she didn't know what to call them. The pain in her head would be there, a constant thrum that she couldn't get rid of, and it was like her eyes glazed over when she was staring at the wall of the classroom, barely paying attention to the teacher prattling on.

It wasn't always clear.

There was always a constant; someone by her side, holding her hand and laughing with her, a face she couldn't quite recall, but she knew it was a girl.

As much as she wanted it to make sense, it didn't.

It got worse when she grew up along with the dreams.

She'd start to see her surroundings from a higher height, the girl growing up much the same, and it felt like she was seeing it all through a filter that made everything distorted. All she took from it was that the girl's voice was different to the one she'd been hearing and that the ages seemed mature, much more than memories she could've lost as a child.

What made her angry was when she realised that she hadn't been hearing someone else in her head.

Rather, when the girl had spoken, talking about something as simple as what they were having for dinner that evening, Marinette had answered.

It felt like she'd suddenly been punched in the stomach.

Because that was—

It was the voice she'd been hearing in her head for _months_. The whispered words that were always followed by pain, leaving her disorientated and lost, confused on her surroundings until she remembered where she was.

Marinette had never felt so out of touch with herself before.

It came at the time where she was finally starting to like herself and the confusion only set her back further.

The girl in her mind had long hair.

Although she hadn't been able to make out her facial features but could clearly remember the sound of her _laugh—_

Marinette felt sick when she looked in the mirror.

And like all those years ago, she stared at her reflection before lifting her blade up, cutting through the dark-coloured strands with the ease that was unrivalled by anything else. The hair fell into the sink, roughly being cut off to her shoulders, and she was breathing heavily by the time it was done.

Tears blurred her vision.

When she turned up at his window that night, Adrien didn't ask about the haircut when he saw how upset she was. Despite the heat, he held her close as they sat down on the edge of his bed, rubbing her back soothingly.

It made her worse.

Adrien was the one she went to for comfort, the one who accepted her through everything—

She didn't like the sudden intrusion of someone else in her head, the hazy visions of a life that could've been. It was bad enough when the voice had been childlike.

The addition of maturity made her want to throw up.

"It could be a—a thing?" Adrien helpfully offered, brushing her uneven hair out of her sweaty forehead. "From killing so many demons? We don't know. No one else has killed as many as you before, I bet."

She sniffled. "I don't want it."

"I don't think it's going to go away," he murmured, tucking her hair behind her ear. Some of the strands were too short to stay there, while the other side was too long. "Who knows? Maybe you're getting the memories of demons you've killed? That could be a thing, for all we know."

"They're consistent," she muttered. "With the same person it it."

"Well," he started, wetting his lips. "The sword's magical, right? What if it's giving you the memories of the person who—who made it or something?"

There was one glaring issue with that. "It's my voice."

"You _think_ it's your voice," he rejected, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. "No one's said your name yet, right? There's nothing incriminating that means it's actually _you_."

The idea of it being her lost memories had been denied, then.

As soon as she'd made the connection that it was her voice, there was no denying it, though. Adrien couldn't listen to it to give her a second opinion but—

She knew what it sounded like to herself because the hazy visions she was seeing weren't from someone else's perspective. She heard the voice coming through her lips, sounding just like when she spoke to him.

And as she tried hard to remember the words that had passed when she'd snapped out of it, repeating them only confirmed that all the more as she muttered them underneath her breath.

She hated it.

They didn't stop.

Marinette saw snippets of a life that was filled with laughter and blurry smiles; sunshine coming down and illuminating flowers in a way that made them look more appealing than the neat little rows Adrien's father spent time on in their garden, the girl that was with her holding her close or tugging her along, proclaiming they were going on an adventure despite the fact they were old enough to realise that adventures weren't really a thing.

Then, she said her name.

There was no denying it after that.

The odds were low that she was imagining someone else called Marinette.

And when she looked at the other girl, taking in the blurry facial features that weren't quite turning into a something she could recognise, it was only the long black hair that she had to go by, looking so shockingly similar to her own that she wanted to clumsily carve more off when she snapped back into existence.

She breathed out slowly. "Do you think we can be reborn?"

"I'd like to think so," Adrien murmured in response, lazily raising his hand and looking through his fingers to admire the clouds in the sky. "I'd like to think I could come back as a cat so someone could pamper me as much as Plagg. That sounds pretty kickass, right?"

She swallowed. "I wouldn't want to be that helpless."

"Come back as a human again, then," he said without skipping a beat. "If you've done it before, why not again? Everything's different—and, well, third time's the charm right?"

He always believed her.

Adrien was sincere in a way that made her want to protect him from the dangers of the world. When he believed in something, it wasn't half-heartedly.

He had the idea to try and use their information to see if they could find anything about what they'd come to the conclusion of her past life. The internet could be used for many things, but she didn't have much information to go on.

While she'd confirmed that her name was Marinette in the scenes she was seeing, there wasn't much else to go by. She didn't see any streets, had no idea of the location, and all she had to go by was the girl that was always by her side, dragging her along into trouble.

It was strange to think that she could've been so carefree before, loved and taken care of. From what she'd glimpsed, her arms hadn't been painfully thin, so her malnourished body was a new thing.

She wondered how much taller she would've been with a healthy lifestyle.

Although she didn't have a name to give for the girl, she'd narrowed down the different feelings she had. While in the haze, focusing on the distant memory and clinging to the words being said, she felt the emotions that she did at that time; the happiness, lingering fondness as they interacted, and as soon as she'd come back to the present, it all turned into resentment.

At least, that was until Adrien knocked over his drink, spilling it onto his white shirt.

"No!" he exclaimed, scrambling to pick up the glass, only causing more liquid to spill in the process. "Oh, fuck, this is going to be so _hard_ to get out—"

"_Do you know how hard grass stains are to get out? I'm not getting on the grass with you again. I love my wings too much for that._"

Adrien was looking at her in concern.

She blinked.

Everything felt dizzy.

And when she spoke, the words sounded strangled. "I think—I think I was an angel?"

As much as it made sense, it was also total nonsense.

With his wet shirt still on, Adrien had gotten a blank piece of paper, marking out two columns for them to put evidence for and against her speculation, treating it as though she hadn't had an epiphany that anyone else would've considered her crazy for.

She'd never seen wings in the visions.

Adrien countered that with she hadn't seen them on the angels she'd seen here either.

The things she'd said before were also strange to her; talking about how tit was different _down there_, about rotting and questioning whether that was what happened where they weren't, talking about humans—

Adrien didn't have to hold her hair when she threw up.

When Chloé had seen how she'd butchered her hair, she'd shoved her in a chair to correct it after Marinette had refused to go to a salon, absolutely disgusted at the thought of spending that much money to get it to look okay.

Adrien said it suited her.

She'd sent a picture of it to Alya, but she'd only gotten back exclamation marks in return.

After she'd calmed down and wasn't in danger of throwing up any more, Adrien started writing on a new sheet of paper. The plan was to compare what she could do to angels, but the problem with that was that they had barely anything to go on.

She knew that demons couldn't sense angels, and Chloé couldn't sense her.

But she could sense demons.

When she looked at Adrien, it was affection that she felt. She could stare at him for an endless amount of time, smile to herself as he did something as simple as fiddle with his hair as he read a comic, and she was sure the feeling of warmth she got from him wasn't something that angels had.

They had to have some way of recognising purity, right?

Marinette didn't have that.

But everything else had come with time, so there was a chance of it happening in the future. If the way her body was changing was because of her previous life—of her being an angel something she couldn't escape—there were still many things that needed to be done.

"So," Adrien started, looking at her seriously as they sat cross-legged on his bed. "Wings."

It had been a fortnight since her revelation but they weren't any closer to answers.

"Wings," she parroted back at him, deadpan.

The visions hadn't shown her wings, nor that time with Nino at the park, but—that had to be a thing, right? She'd heard it mentioned from her own mouth, the previous version of herself complaining—

It was because of that that Adrien cleared his throat before saying, "Let's try and summon them, yeah?"

She squinted. "And how do you think that'll work?"

"Well," he said, drawing out the vowel. "I tried to look some stuff up, you know? Like, there could be some truth hidden away in there somewhere, so I read a lot of shitty fanfiction and it just made my brain hurt."

Marinette blinked. "What?"

He clapped his hands. "I will guide you through this."

"Thank you?" It came out sounding like a question. "I'm very confused about what's happening right now."

There was no sign of laughter as he announced, "We're clenching."

"...We're what?"

"That has to get them out if you've got them, right?" Adrien theorised, reaching an arm back to touch his own back. "If you, like, imagine them coming out and push... it might happen?"

She gnawed on the inside of her cheek. "I don't think that'll work."

"We don't know until we try," he replied, clasping his hands together and resting them on his lap. "It might help if you imagine them? I don't really know. We're trying everything we can without resorting to something weird like hypnosis. That was a slippery slope that kept me up until three last night because I kept watching shit and being really, really confused."

Dubious, she said, "Do you even believe this will work? At all?"

"About fifty percent." He shrugged. "Weirder shit has happened, right? I mean, it's pretty strange already that your skin's so tough now. Do you think that means you're immune to sunburn? I'm going to keep sharing my cream so we don't find out. It's the _worst_."

She had to ask, "How much sugar have you had?"

He grinned, showing his teeth. "I might've downed some coffee before you got here."

That explained how jittery he was, then. "Why?"

"I want this to work!" he exclaimed, a bit too loudly. "I just—I want everything to make sense for you, yeah? You deserve good things. Knowing nothing about yourself isn't good."

And when that was paired with a soft expression as he looked at her, there was no telling him no.

That didn't mean it worked.

Marinette really did try to clench her muscles, feeling utterly ridiculous as she did so, and she'd started laughing when Adrien told her to touch her back while doing it to see whether anything felt different. The two of them ended up bursting into laughter at the ridiculousness of the situation, neither taking it as serious in the end.

"I'm glad you don't have wings," he murmured as they hugged, resting his chin on her shoulder. "Birds make me sneeze. I'd hate to suddenly have an allergy to you."

She snickered.

-x-

When summer really hit, it came with the memory of running through a meadow, laughing as she tumbled to the ground, the other girl falling down with her.

They were always together.

And in her current life, she was with Adrien the most.

With his parents giving in to buying him a paddling pool, one that they could barely both fit in, resulting in it barely coming up to their waists when they sat down in it, it meant that he was more than happy to stay at home instead of going out.

It had become the routine for his days off. Adrien had always preferred to stay in bed, lazing around, though the few times he didn't meet his friends at their houses, he text Marinette to say he was going out with his mother.

She was always nearby, checking on it.

He didn't repeat the cake incident.

The flip-flops came back out, though, in even more atrocious colours to the previous pair he'd worn out. He was particularly fond of a neon pair that didn't match the rest of his clothing.

In comparison to his mismatched looks, Chloé liked to make sure everything was coordinated; from her expensive sunglasses to clothes that showed far too much skin, every outfit she wore screamed wealth.

Marinette looked like a slob in comparison in her oversized clothes.

She'd downgraded into shorts underneath her big t-shirts, tying the bottom of the shirt into a knot to try and be a bit cooler, leaving it baggy enough to cover her blade underneath. There was always the option to place it in her bag like she'd done before, but she didn't want to repeat the mistake of the beach again.

The sword gave her a sense of security, even if she was tougher now.

She didn't want to be without it.

And it became clear in the hazy memories that the girl didn't want to be without her.

They were almost always together. The first time she was there with no one beside her, it was to her idly strumming what looked similar to a guitar, closing her eyes and listening to the soft music that she played.

Marinette didn't know how to play any instruments.

It was a luxury that she'd never given herself. She knew that she wasn't creative—art classes had proved that, and she wasn't interested in fashion—so that recollection made it even more apparent that she wasn't like her old self.

The fading sound of her voice in her head proved that, too; from saying that there was never a good reason to hurt someone, showing empathy that she definitely didn't have in that life, and such whimsical words that Marinette couldn't match up the two parts of herself to make sense.

It wasn't too far-fetched to think that people would change, especially when their memories weren't attached.

While angels weren't good, the angel she'd been was.

Then again, anyone seemed good in comparison to her.

And as she gazed at Adrien as he gnawed on his lower lip while working on his essay, she knew that if anyone deserved to be a celestial being in a previous life, it was Adrien. From what she'd seen, the life she'd had wasn't full of pain and hunger—instead happy and healthy with the other girl that was always there.

He deserved that.

They only had to take exams for half of their classes, thankfully. The rest they had to turn in projects and essays instead, ones that she could spend an extended period of time on instead of suffering through the exam with her head throbbing in that way that seemed almost permanent.

She didn't bother with the painkillers any more.

Adrien had the wise idea of trying to teach her to ride a bicycle when he realised that she had no idea.

He had a rusty bike that he used to ride when he was younger, much more suited for her height than his. It had a wicker basket on the front that was covered in dirt and close to falling off, paint chipped from the years, and he had to put oil on the chain to make it smoother for her.

Adrien held onto her when she wobbled at first, helping her down his street. They were sticking to the path and his front lawn—which his parents had given permission to after Adrien had loudly said that she needed to learn—and she'd started to sweat within a few minutes of them being out in the sun.

He made a point of putting sunscreen on her face, cooing at the freckles on her skin as he did so.

She leaned into his touch with a smile.

Her hair was too short to all fit into a ponytail. She could put them into two when her neck got too hot. A good portion of her hair could be pulled into a ponytail for when they went to school, but being under the sun meant that the loose hairs would stick to her skin.

She didn't regret cutting it, not after she came to realise that her hair was also long in the visions.

It was a way of distancing herself from them.

She wasn't kind, she didn't care about hurting others, and she didn't have some girl by her side, coaxing her into trouble while giggling.

All she had was Adrien, and that was enough.

When she admitted that she'd cut her hair because her past life, Adrien surprised her the next time she came round by dramatically presenting a box of bleach to her.

She stared.

"No?" he questioned, wiggling his fingers towards it. "It would be really different, you know? If you don't like it, we can always dye it black again. I didn't buy any colours because I wasn't sure what you'd like."

She was bad at saying no.

It resulted in her sitting in his kitchen, a plastic bag tied around her neck, clips parting her hair as he mixed the bleach in a plastic bowl that he'd purchased along with the colour that they'd picked out for her. The whole thing was happening the day after he'd proposed it, and as soon as he'd realised that she was serious about agreeing, there was a bounce in his step as he pulled her along to the shop to buy the rest of what they needed.

His mother had purchased the bleach on his request before.

And when she'd walked into the kitchen to see Adrien messily putting the bleach into her hair, his mother had taken one look before shooing him to the side, taking over.

Adrien pouted.

Marinette laughed as his mother scolded him for doing it all wrong.

The sun was still up when they'd finished and her short hair was coloured grey.

Adrien's mother warned her that it wouldn't last long until she had to tone it again, but she was fine with that.

She didn't hate it.

When she looked in the mirror, she almost couldn't recognise herself.

Alya was more supportive of that change to her hair than the last.

Chloé had raised her eyebrows and asked, "You're not trying to slut it up suddenly, are you?"

It turned out with her dyed hair, blood showed up when it was on it. Her natural colour was too dark for the red to stain it, only giving it the appearance of being wet, but it was so much worse with the light colour.

Chloe had laughed. "Now you feel my pain."

She wasn't sure how to feel about that.

It turned out that if she distracted herself, she didn't have to think about it. Marinette lurked outside the demon-ran nightclub, staying far enough back that when someone came into view they triggered her sense. It had taken some time to try and narrow down who it was pinging for, and while it wasn't reliable when it was busy, late at night when there was less people made it easier for her.

Feeling playful, she waited until the demon was walking past her to throw her sword, gleeful when it sliced through the demon's chest, slashing through a good portion of it along with their functioning heart. And as they staggered, about to fall to their knees, she wrapped the bandalore around them and tugged them away from the street.

She retrieved her sword, flicking it to get the blood off for that short period of time.

"_I don't want to hurt anyone that doesn't deserve it._"

She could afford to be careless, to be kicked and not have her bones shatter from the impact, without it costing her her life.

When the demon scratched her with their nails, causing a red mark to appear on her skin instead of ripping it off savagely, she sliced off their arm in return.

"_How can I know what we're doing is right? I want to protect people but—but won't it cause more suffering if I'm careless?_"

And as the demon turned into ash, settling in the blood that was soaking into the coat, a smile curled on her lips.

She didn't care if she was considered cruel.

The Marinette of her memories was weak, wasn't she? She was stronger in physical ways, surely; but she was everything that Marinette didn't want to be.

"_I just don't want to hurt anyone more than I need to, you know? I want to save them._"

There was only one person that deserved that.

There was a certain thrill that came from realising that she'd reincarnated as her opposite—she stood for everything her past self had been against; the needless violence, causing hurt and suffering for personal gain, and her cold attitude towards others.

Not everything passed through to her.

Adrien had tried to look up articles on reincarnation, but nothing had solid evidence of it being real. A lot of the people that claimed they had details of their previous lives weren't able to prove it, and the research ended up falling to a stop when nothing helpful popped up.

"It's okay," she told him softly, resting her head on his shoulder. "Thank you for trying."

Gently, he brushed her short hair away from her face. "I'm sorry I can't do anything more for you."

"You're doing more than enough," she murmured, pressing a lazy kiss to his skin. "No one else would've done this."

"You haven't spent time with anyone else like you do with me," he pointed out. "When's the last time you were with Alya? Just you two?"

"It's been a while," she replied with a shrug. "I've been busy."

"I know this is difficult," he started, wincing at how his words sounded. "Well, I don't _know_, but—but I'm trying to say, don't push everyone else away, okay? They might not completely understand, but they love you."

She smiled, pressing her face into his shoulder to try and hide it. "You're embarrassing."

"I'm saying the truth!" he defended with a laugh. "Nino's been asking if you're okay, too. They're worried about you."

She breathed out audibly. "Okay, I'll talk to them."

"You don't have to explain everything," he gently told her. "But we could meet up? With everyone?"

Marinette murmured into his skin, "If your padding pool's involved, that's fine."

Adrien laughed. "I'll see what my parents say."

-x-

For her seventeenth birthday, Adrien touched up her roots and toned her hair again.

His mother supervised to make sure he was doing it right.

Alya and Nino had come over with a skateboard under their arms, proclaiming that it was a rite of passage for her to learn to ride one. As with the bicycle, they went out into the street, each of them demonstrating how it was supposed to be done before she tried.

The plus side was that she didn't get scraped knees and hands like they did.

Adrien had never learned to skateboard either, but he picked it up quickly compared to her.

It was a fun afternoon that ended with cake, takeaway food, and no party poppers being shot at her face. That wasn't a detail she missed.

With her grades high enough to make it into the second, and final year, there came an awkward moment where they were given a list of textbooks that they needed to order online. The problem was that Marinette still didn't have a bank account, and she wasn't about to beg Chloé to order them for her.

Adrien's father didn't ask too many questions after Adrien had said they thought it would be easier to double-up and buy them together. She slid him the money necessary for the textbooks with all the seriousness she'd seen for drug deals on the television.

She returned back to the stuffy classrooms with faint memories of laughter, whispered words that she should consider the harm of her actions before she committed to anything, and with every passing day, she found the situation she was in as tragic as it was hilarious.

It was fitting that she was what she'd hated, wasn't it?

Marinette was bad at loving herself, no matter the life.

And as the days passed steadily, bleeding into each other as she spent as much time with Adrien as possible, hunting with Chloé predominantly at night, she'd started to think that she'd gotten her life back under control. The headaches were still present;s a dull throb that could almost be ignored—it was only when she recalled something she'd said before that the pain got intolerable.

She hated how stupid the triggers for it were.

One time when she saw that Alya was calling and she was too lazy to get up and answer, the throb in her head increased.

"_If I'm being called, I'm not going to ignore them._"

It was ridiculous.

Chloé was as helpful as ever when the topic was brought up.

"You don't have, like, a record of all the angels you've gone across do you?" Marinette questioned, shifting in the seat of the booth they'd settled down in for dinner. Her leggings were wet from blood, though it hadn't gotten onto her hair. "By you I mean your people as a whole, yeah? That sounds like something that would be—well, good."

Chloé shrugged. "I don't really talk to the scholars."

"_Scholars_."

"Bitch, we have blacksmiths," Chloé deadpanned. "Why are you drawing the line at scholars? We've been around since before your great-grandparents were alive."

She snorted. "Right, old timey-wimey."

Chloé kicked her under the table.

And when she jumped from surprise rather than pain, her knee jerked up and hit the table. Marinette hissed in displeasure, putting her hand over her knee despite knowing that it really wouldn't hurt like it used to, the reaction was still instinctual.

"More people used to keep track before," Chloé said, accepting her coffee from the waitress and pouring far too much sugar into it. "But their numbers started to get lower? Or they just weren't turning up any more. I mean, fuck, the last sighting was, like, two years ago now, right?"

She didn't believe her, then.

Marinette wasn't going to push the subject that Chloé couldn't sense them.

"I guess," she murmured, glumly stirring her own drink. "It just—it's weird, isn't it? There's so many of your kind but none of them."

"Hell's dead," Chloé coldly reminded her, no sincerity in her smile. "Why care about this dump when you've got somewhere else to go?"

With a laugh, she asked, "Is it really that bad here?"

"There's no comparison," was the response she got to that. It was paired with a wistful tone as Chloé leaned back against the seat, pulling one knee up to her chest and surely flashing anyone that looked over at her. "If you think it's beautiful here, it's like trash compared to what it once was."

If her memories were anything to go by, she hoped Chloé had lived in such a pretty place. "What happened?"

Chloé pursed her lips. "The inevitable."

Of all the times Hell was mentioned, she'd never gotten a clear answer about what had happened. Chloé was tight-lipped about that part of her life, keeping it close and not allowing any details to come out, much like the hundreds of years that she'd been around. All Marinette knew was her current life in the city.

She sighed, propping her elbow on the table to rest her head on her hand. "I'll find out someday."

Chloé clicked her tongue. "Pry it from my cold dead hands."

"You _can't_ die."

Chloé beamed.

Her phone buzzed with a message from Adrien.

His parents wanted to go out for dinner. He'd sent her the address and extended the invitation to her per his father's request.

She didn't need to look up the address on the internet.

It was near her.

Her theory was that she was able to detect demons at a longer distance than they could sense Adrien, but she didn't want to test that, especially not when Chloé was the one with her. Her sense only allowed her to know if there was a demon nearby, not exactly where or how many, so being with Chloé meant that there was a constant hum the entire time.

Their food hadn't arrived yet.

There was no logical reason that she could get Chloé to leave with her; whether she pretended to be sick or left on her own, Chloé was stubborn enough to stick around to eat what she'd paid for.

And when she text back to say that he should suggest a different restaurant further away, he said that he was already in the car.

While Adrien was good at lying, his acting skills weren't at the same level.

It wasn't the stuffy atmosphere in the diner that was making her sweat.

Marinette carried on like nothing had happened, not mentioning the messages, instead putting her phone on the seat beside her, face up so she could the messages as they came through.

Chloé just raised her eyebrows at her behaviour before taking a sip of her drink.

She wasn't good at lying.

The waitress came and delivered their food by the time Adrien had made it to the restaurant. There was no visible change in Chloé's behaviour, no stiffening as she suddenly became aware of something feeling different for only her—

If anything, everything continued on like normal.

When her phone chimed again, Chloé laughed at her for having weak friends, finding it absolutely hilarious that she'd managed to get Nino to believe her in the first place.

"I don't know how you did it," Chloé mused, the curl of her smile bordering on a smirk. "He must be shitting myself all the time now. You're not going to let me see him again, are you?"

She didn't try to deny that. "No."

"Boring." Chloé sighed. "The humans I've let on in the past have always quivered and not looked me in the eyes after they found out—so they had to go, of course."

It wasn't a laugh of disbelief that left it. It sounded entirely possible. "Have to go when they know, then?"

"No," Chloé denied. "No one's going to believe them, right? It's fun to fill them in. That's how hunters come around."

She raised her eyebrows. "Because you had their ancestor as your plaything?"

"Because sometimes being the only one in on a secret is boring," Chloé murmured, looking Marinette in the eyes as she took a bite of her food. "Wouldn't you say so?"

It was maddening when she'd only had Chloe to speak to, back when their friendship was tentative and just as likely to kill her or benefit her.

"It's fun," Chloé said, voice holding softness that wasn't reflected in her expression. "They pick up their little weapons and think that they can do some damage. Seeing them stumble and cry is so fun."

She hummed. "Some manage to kill you, don't they?"

"Any demon that dies to a human deserves it," Chloé replied, haughtily raising her head up. "I thought they were always so pathetic, you know? Like a child playing with sticks, but then—I saw you."

Marinette avoided responding to that by taking a bite of her own food.

"You're an oddity," Chloé remarked, a tone that could only be described as fond. "Who else can boast about the fucked up things you've done? And you—you don't even cry about them. There's something so tragic and beautiful about you."

No one had ever called her beautiful before, not in any context.

She exhaled. "It sounds like you're hitting on me."

"I might," Chloé said, licking her lower lip as she raised her eyebrows. "There is something quite enticing about someone so weak turning into what you are now. Do you even see yourself in others any more?"

It wasn't a jab, not a sharp comment that was supposed to make her curl into herself in shame.

As detached as she was, Chloé understood.

Marinette replied, "Did I ever?"

Chloé's laugh was loud. "I'm fucking glad I didn't kill you."

"Where else would you get your entertainment?" she murmured, only able to tuck a few strands of hair behind her ear. "I'm probably the longest you've been friends with a human."

Chloé grinned. "Let's see how long it lasts, shall we?"

And as she was eased in a false sense of security, letting her guard down and thinking that she didn't need to be worried any more, she started to believe that Chloé's senses weren't as widespread as hers.

Marinette paid for the meal, placing the right amount of money down on the table before they got up to leave, and it was when they'd stepped outside and Chloé had proposed finding a target for that evening that someone else's voice came through.

"Marinette?"

Adrien's mother was standing there, a polite smile on her lips as she held onto her bag hanging off her shoulder.

There wasn't anyone else with her, but that still made Marinette's voice come out sounding strangled. "Hi."

"I wasn't expecting to see you here," Adrien's mother continued in that kind and patient tone that she always had. "I won't keep you girls. I just wanted to say hi before I pop into the shop."

There was something so horrifying about knowing that Adrien's mother was looking at Chloé without a clue that Chloé was the thing that Aloys fought.

"Oh, right," Adrien's mother quickly said, turning to offer her hand out to Chloé. "I'm Adrien's mother. I don't believe we've met before."

Chloé looked at her with raised eyebrows, pointedly not taking her hand. "Right."

"Well." Adrien's mother dropped her hand, smile still looking as polite as before. "It was lovely meeting you. I'll see you bright and early tomorrow morning, Marinette."

She barely whispered out her good-bye.

Chloé's laugh was sincere. "Making friends, are we?"

She didn't say anything.

Chloé didn't push the subject. Instead, she stretched her arms over her head until an audible crack was heard, and then they were walking in the same direction that Adrien's mother had come.

She hadn't heard her phone buzz.

Adrien had sent a message that his parents believed that he was sick and that they were leaving early.

"That's—" Chloé cut herself off, taking in a stuttered breath.

Marinette's heart beat fast in her chest.

It was the situation she'd always wanted to avoid. Of all the times that she'd imagined it, had stared up at the ceiling in horror and thought about how she'd try to stop it, the feeling she felt didn't compare to that moment.

Chloé was her best friend, wasn't she?

They understood each other.

And yet, there was no making her understand this.

"Fucking hell," Chloé said in a hushed whisper, wide-eyed, footsteps coming to a stop as she paused, looking a bit dazed as she looked around.

"Chloé—"

"This way," Chloé interrupted.

And then Chloé was curling a hand around her wrist, tugging her along the street, heels clicking with every quick step. Marinette knew that she wouldn't be able to pull her hand back, wouldn't be able to push Chloé aside and talk her through it.

All she could do was lamely ask, "What?"

"I want to get there first," was all she got in response to that.

Marinette got her phone out, quickly texting Adrien that he needed to leave, but she knew that it wasn't going to do anything. His mother was still at the shop, hadn't passed them as they walked, so they were surely waiting for her to return.

Her stomach churned uncomfortably as Chloé pulled her along to a parking lot.

Adrien was standing there with his father, outside of the car and chatting. His father was smoking a cigarette while Adrien stayed on the other side where the wind wasn't blowing the smoke onto him, the two of them completely unaware.

"The younger one," Chloé murmured, sounding almost giddy. "He's _pure_."

The distance was less than the range of Marinette's sense, almost by half. There had only been one building between them and the parking lot while they were on the street.

Unlike Marinette, Chloé had known where to go. It seemed that she didn't just have a sense that something was amiss; rather, the shorter distance meant that she could narrow it down more. And from what she'd said before, she could simply look at a demon to know what they were.

"You can tell," the words slipped out quietly.

It wasn't a question.

Chloé hummed, finally letting go of her wrist. "I can feel it."

All Marinette could feel was the cold sweat that had appeared on her brow.

Chloé wouldn't—

She wouldn't do it in public, would she? But Chloé had planned to run off with the money from her company and disappear—if the opportunity for killing an innocent came up, there wasn't a reason not to take it, not when she already had plans to leave.

With a shaky breath, she whispered, "You're going to kill him."

"Oh, yes," Chloé confirmed, the laugh that escaped her filled with happiness, none of the spiralling emotions that Marinette was feeling. "What fucking luck is this? He's a teenager, too. That'll be easier than trying to lure a baby out."

She touched her side, feeling the outline of her sword through her shirt. "You're luring him here?"

"Or I could kill his father," Chloé remarked, sounding ever-so-casual. "There hasn't been a murder around here for a while? Might as well spice things up."

"Angels will get involved."

She was grasping at straws.

Chloé snorted. "Yeah, right."

"They will," Marinette insisted, putting her body in front of Chloé, trying to act as a barrier between them. It was a stupid thought, one that had worked as when she'd done it with Nino towering above her, and all it caused was for Chloé to look at her as though she was a pest. "He knows."

Chloé cocked her head to the side. "He knows?"

She wetted her lips. "About you."

"Oh," Chloé breathed, sounding thrilled at that. "Another one of your friends, is he?"

She didn't answer.

And as Chloé's hand went on her shoulder, gripping tightly and digging into skin that was too tough to be hurt any more, Chloé asked, "You're not going to try and keep him away, are you?"

There wasn't much she could say, was there?

Marinette knocked her hand away.

"I'll kill his family," Chloé started, lips curling into a smile that had never looked so cruel before. "Unless you get him to come willingly, I will hurt them."

That was the thing.

Marinette cared for Adrien, not his parents.

To her, they were expendable, two people that didn't matter in the end. They offered her smiles and invited her into their home, but she didn't feel anything for them.

Adrien loved them.

If she got them killed, she wasn't sure if he'd forgive her.

For all the things he'd forgiven over the years, the carelessness of her nature, and how little she worried about how she hurt others, there was only so much he could accept. There would eventually be a line that she'd cross and he wouldn't be able to look at her the same way—

Adrien would die for them, but she wouldn't let him do that.

"Chloé." And to her horror, her voice came out choked. "He—"

"You know I'm not joking," Chloé said. "I'll follow him and do what I want without your fucking permission. The only reason I'm telling you this is because you seem to care about them."

She swallowed.

"Unless you don't?" Chloé sounded thoughtful.

"I can get him to come," Marinette whispered, voice sounding foreign to her ears. "I can—I can get him to meet us somewhere."

Chloé snorted. "Oh, can you now?"

If it came down to it, there wasn't an option, was there?

She cared about Chloé in her own way, but it wasn't that overwhelming obsession that she had for Adrien. She didn't care about Chloé's safety, didn't want to protect her from the world, and she didn't treasures the quiet moments where they were close and hidden away from anyone else.

"Less casualties means less attention," she said, looking straight into Chloé's eyes. "That's what you want, isn't it? If I can get him to meet us, no one else has to be involved."

Chloé's smile showed her teeth. "Offering your friend up to me, are you?"

"You've seen him," she retorted, breaths coming fast. "You know about him."

And with that, realisation came across Chloé's expression.

The accusation came in a whisper, "You knew."

She didn't look away. "I knew."

Chloé's laugh was loud.

The hairs on Marinette's arms stood up at the sound of it.

"You're a real fucking treat," Chloé murmured, licking her lower lip. "You were dreading the day this would come, weren't you?"

If there was one thing she knew, it was that Adrien was her weakness.

"His mother will be back soon," Marinette said, not wanting to turn her head to see whether that was true. "If she sees us here, it'll be suspicious."

The way Chloé looked at her was patronising. "Will it now?"

"Yes," she confirmed, daring to take ahold of Chloé's wrist and attempt to drag her away, reminiscent to the way she'd done to her not too long ago. "Where do you want him to meet us?"

"Invite him to ours," Chloé said, nothing short of a demand as she refused to be moved. "Right now, or I'm not leaving."

To that, she took her phone out, typing the message that she needed him to meet her at a specific address. Marinette made sure to send a few texts first with only one letter in each, filling out the space and making it so her warnings were hidden. There was always the chance that Chloe would scroll up and see them regardless, but she wanted to avoid it.

And as the text was sent, Chloé's gaze went over her shoulder, surely looking in Adrien's direction.

She got a message back which consisted of multiple question marks.

Marinette needed him to trust her.

That was what their relationship was built on, wasn't it? Adrien had trusted her countless times, hid and tried to stay out of sight while she took care of the horrors that wanted to hurt him—

She needed it one more time.

After sending back the address again, making a point of it, she turned the phone around for Chloé to see the exchange.

"Oh, how sweet," Chloé cooed, utterly mocking. "You have a heart beside his name, do you?"

She inhaled sharply.

Marinette had forgotten he'd added that.

He text back, saying he could make it soon.

His parents weren't going to let him out of their sight. It was telling how lenient they were about Marinette coming to visit more often than Alya and Nino had been allowed to before she'd appeared, and his parents' tolerance of her was a shining example that they liked her.

He said he'd have to sneak out.

Chloé jotted down the license plate of the car before they left.

She was still breathing heavily.

While Chloé—

Chloé was ecstatic, a skip in her step that hadn't been as prominent since she'd gained her second heart. For her, it was an experience of a lifetime, and the added bonus of not having to try and lure Adrien out was surely a plus for her.

Marinette was trying to come to terms with what was happening.

Every footstep felt heavy as they walked in the opposite direction, walking through the city to go back home.

She had to kill her.

Chloé, who had pushed her aside and saved her life—

Her first friend since she'd stumbled into the city, the one that had moulded her into what she was. Because without Chloé, she would've been clumsy and not nearly as successful as she was before—she wouldn't have known half as much as she did if she'd stuck with Fu.

"_I'd do anything for you_."

Her eyes burned from more than the headache.

Chloé's voice cut through the haze. "You're not _that_ attached to him, are you?"

She lifted her head and stared.

"I told you not to waste your time for some mediocre cock," Chloé grumbled, disapproval clear in her stance. "That's what this is about, isn't it? You'll find another one."

She didn't say anything.

Chloé continued to complain, saying that humans weren't worth her time, let alone human _men_, and that Marinette should set her sights on someone who could handle her now that she was less breakable.

With every step, she was aware of the sword strapped to her waist.

She'd have to do it.

There wasn't a choice there.

Chloé would never stop because she asked her to, wouldn't swallow up her pride and allow some other demon to attempt to kill him in the future instead. And the thought someone actually getting something she couldn't was surely making her feel petty.

Chloé didn't like to share.

And yet, Marinette was in her home.

And as they went through the front door, the words came out as a whisper, "You wouldn't stop even if I asked, would you?"

Chloé didn't turn around, instead getting a bottle of wine out of the fridge. "Why ask when you already know the answer?"

Her phone vibrated.

Adrien was calling her.

She didn't answer, instead sending back a text asking him to trust her.

"You're not going to fight me on this, are you?" Chloé questioned, a frown on her lips after she took a swig of wine straight from the bottle. "I've invested too much time on you for you to be a pussy now."

"I won't," she said, hopping up onto the countertop to sit, her feet not touching the floor. "How much power will you get from him?"

Chloé shrugged. "A lot, hopefully. Haven't exactly got a scale to compare him to."

She wetted her lips. "He's coming here now."

"Great."

Her heartbeat was loud.

With anyone else, she wouldn't have hesitated. She could care less about the element of surprise when she got hurt less, could take hits before using the bandalore—

She'd never used it on Chloé.

This was her home, wasn't it?

The closest she'd had to one; a safe place she could relax in for the last year, to be with Chloé in the warm when it was snowing out, somewhere they could both complain about trying to get blood out of their clothes, to be with someone that understood—

Reaching under her shirt, she gripped the handle, aware of the clamminess of her skin.

Chloé meant something to her.

More than Alya and Nino, Chloé was someone that was able to spark emotions in her in the harshest of times. Chloé had given her pointers and helped her perfect her techniques, had been the one that had her back when she was caught off-guard, and she was going to do the opposite of all of that.

As Chloé took another drink from the bottle—a gulp, eyes closed as she did so—Marinette threw her sword so it would pierce through Chloé's shoulder.

The bottle smashed on the floor, liquid covering the tiles.

Chloé hissed, staggering forward and touching where the tip of the sword had gone straight through her skin, letting out a grunt as she tugged it out the other side, her blood-covered hand pointing the sword out at her.

Marinette stayed on the countertop.

"Was that fucking necessary?" Chloé snapped, rubbing at her newly-healed skin, smearing the blood over it. "I just bought the shirt."

That was the thing, wasn't it? Violence came natural to them, so normal that Chloé threw knives at her all of the time. It wasn't unnatural for Marinette to try and harm her in return, not when they both knew that the sword she had in her possession was capable of it.

"I don't like it," she said.

"Well, I didn't buy it for _you_," Chloé muttered, inspecting the hole in the front where the tip had poked through, throwing the sword to clatter onto the countertop. "You're paying me back for this."

She could reach out and pick up the sword without getting up.

"And you're cleaning that up." Chloé kicked the puddle of wine of the floor that was left there, mingling in with the blood that had splattered down. "I'm not getting on my knees when I'm not in the fucking mood for it."

Chloé didn't think she was a threat.

Marinette hadn't threatened her seriously for over a year. There was trust between them, so much so that throwing knives and her sword—that Chloé had seen kill countless other demons—didn't warrant panic.

It was normal to them.

And wasn't that tragic?

For all she'd been told about demons, she didn't think that they were necessarily bad. They were overpowered with their strength and prideful, sure, and she doubted she'd met any human that qualified to be as evil as Chloé—

Other than herself.

She gripped the sword with her dominant hand.

Her phone buzzed, Adrien saying that he was on the street.

And when she looked at Chloé, she could see when it clicked—when Chloé could feel that he was close by. Chlóé straightened up, stepping on the glass on the floor as she walked past, bloody footprints standing out against the tiles, smoothing out her clothes before looking in the mirror.

"Primping?" she questioned.

"I like to be presentable," Chloé replied, pushing her hair behind her shoulder. "The less to clean up the better. It's going to be a bitch cleaning up after him as it is."

She swallowed. "Can't let the neighbours suspect."

"Exactly." Chloé flashed her a smile. "Glad you understand now. I was starting to think you were about to cry."

Because she was.

Adrien trusted her so much that he was walking to an unknown address without explanation. She'd kept that information secret from him for a reason, wanted to keep the two of them separate—

She stepped down onto the wet tiles, blade in her hand as she crossed the room. The glass didn't cut her feet and leave a trail of blood like it did Chloé; she felt it, yes, but the shards couldn't pierce her skin any more.

Chloé didn't look at her.

She was waiting by the front door instead, impatiently tapping her foot and waiting for a knock to announce Adrien's arrival.

Chloé trusted her, too.

She really thought that Marinette was about to sell out her human friend; that she cared more about her and her quest for power than a random human that she'd never mentioned before. There was no consideration that Adrien was someone precious to her, that he was the reason for being—

Chloé had her back to her, vulnerable and open.

The fabric had torn from her sword, showing her bloodstained skin of her shoulder blade that had fully healed in seconds.

"He's almost here," she said.

Chloé hummed. "I know."

But Chloé didn't know everything.

The bandalore was tucked away in the bag on her chest, secure and kept behind a zip that she wouldn't be able to get out without it being suspicious. She'd never gotten the bandalore out before when she knew that it was only a human involved.

And yet, her standing there with her bloodied sword in her hand wasn't a cause for alarm.

Chloé was only jittery from the thought of gaining more power; to get back what she'd lost and be able to gain the upper-hand once more, not because she'd realised that Marinette would betray her.

Because that's what it was, wasn't it?

And with that realisation, she felt numb.

The prickling of her eyes wasn't because of unshed tears.

With a knock at the front door, Marinette literally stabbed her friend in the back.

Chloé slumped against the door in surprise, movement causing the blade to slice deeper, straight through her functioning heart and causing her body to go loose from the brief loss of control of death.

It was hard to breathe.

She pulled the blade back, blood splattering on the floor, Chloé falling to the ground because of it. She turned her over, sitting on her abdomen and thrusting the blade through her heart before she could get a chance to react, killing her all over again.

It was her best friend staring blankly at her with dead eyes.

And when she came back to life, sucking in a sharp breath as arching off of the floor, disorientated and trying to grasp the situation, Marinette held onto the sword with two hands, the tip pressing into Chloé's chest.

Her voice shook as she whispered, "This is your fault."

Chloé didn't react violently.

Instead, she tilted her head, a curious look overcoming her features as she said, "You're doing this."

It wasn't a question.

She pressed the blade in further, careful with her control not to temporarily kill her again.

Chloé sat up abruptly.

Marinette fumbled, quickly changing the angle of the knife so it wouldn't impale her from the sudden movement. She was still straddling her, breathing heavily and pointing the sword at her chest as though it was a threat.

It was supposed to be.

And yet, Chloé was looking at her like she'd never seen her before.

"Kill me," Chloé whispered, goading her. "That's what you're trying to do, isn't it?"

Her hands were shaking.

"Come on." Chloé wrapped her hand around hers, pressing the tip in until it pierced her skin, a steady stream of blood colouring her shirt before it was even an inch deep, missing any vital organs. "After all I've fucking done for you, you're going to do this."

There was another knock at the door.

Chloé didn't look away from her.

"I died for you."

It wasn't a reminder she needed to hear.

Her vision started to blur from tears, but she didn't back off. Chloé's grip around her wrist grew tighter, thrusting the blade further into her chest, and if she was still weak—the fragile little thing she'd used to be—her wrist would've been broken in seconds.

She wasn't that girl any more.

"Why?" Chloé demanded, her tight hold being the one to keep the sword pressed into her chest, each breath causing it to dig in and trickle blood down, not allowing her to heal over it.

There was so much she couldn't say.

Somehow, it was worse without Chloé backhanding her away. They both knew that Marinette wouldn't die she'd survive no matter how hard Chloé hit her.

Their situations were almost reversed from when they met.

"For him?" Chloé spat, the anger in her voice deserved. "For a _human_?"

She choked out, "I'm human."

It sounded like a lie even to her own ears.

"You're supposed to be better than them," Chloé said, letting go of the sword to instead reach out and grip Marinette's neck, holding tightly and unable to restrict her airway. "You really think they'll still fucking like you after everything you've done?"

With nails pressing into her skin, Chloé's muscles tensing as she held onto her tighter, it was clear that she was trying to hurt her. The sad part was that the pain didn't even compare to her headache when a year ago, it would've rendered her unconscious from being unable to breathe.

The human comment was losing meaning with every passing day.

"You—" Marinette exhaled audibly, blinking to try and stop he tears from falling as she stared at the twisted expression of her first friend in her teenage years. "It's him or you."

Chloé glowered, squeezing tighter. "You're pathetic."

Even if that was true, she was fine with that.

She'd been living on the principle that Adrien came first. No matter how much he'd tried to get her to put herself first in the situation, that wasn't going to happen.

Chloé shouldn't have factored into it.

And as Chloé pushed her back, causing Marinette to fall on the floor ungracefully and make a noise of surprise as the blade came out, still clutched in her hands, Marinette had to react on instinct as Chloé went to open the door.

Rather than cut across the back of the ankle like Chloé had suggested she do before, it cut right through because she hadn't tried to restrict her strength.

Chloé screamed in pain, unable to keep herself up without her foot, and as blood gushed, that was enough time for her to regenerate and her discarded body parts to become ash that settled onto the bloody floor.

Marinette stumbled back from being kicked in the stomach, letting out a wheeze from being jostled, and she responded by sinking the blade into Chloé's abdomen, thrusting it upwards, cutting through her stomach and exposing her organs to the open air with the ease.

The stuttered breaths she took in weren't because of pain.

While she didn't have strength to match Chloé's, it was her sword that did all of the work.

Chloé snagged her knee, causing her to stumble forward and fall on her, front wet and drenched from the movement, and Chloé's face was inches from her as Chloé's hand wound into her short hair and pulled.

Her head jerked back from it, her grip on her blade slippery, and it was dumb luck that she managed to angle it to slice through Chloé's first heart.

Unlike the other times, she didn't wait those few seconds for her to regenerate.

Marinette leaned back to see the exposed skin of Chloé's stomach—where it had been savagely cut open barely even a minute ago—and pierced the tip through her unconscious body where she predicted the final heart to be.

Her body disintegrated.

And as her sword clattered to the floor, the puddle of blood consuming the ash that had appeared, darkening it and making it look like sludge, Marinette stared as she took in a stuttered breath.

She could barely see.

And yet, when she turned her hands over to look at the blood, she couldn't tear her gaze away.

She'd never expected to care.

It had never been in her plan; Chloé had been an unknown that she hadn't known how to handle, yet she'd managed to worm her way in and—

And Marinette had killed her.

For someone that prided herself on never dying, Chloé had done it twice since meeting her.

Her stomach lurked.

With her shirt sticking to her stomach from spilled blood, her small bag still on with the bandalore untouched, she couldn't ignore how wet everything felt. When she raised a shaking hand to her face, surely smearing blood as she touched, she realised that she was crying.

And once she noticed that, it was like she couldn't stop.

Marinette pulled her soaked knees up to her chest, pressing her face into them as she squeezed her eyes shut until she saw only black behind her eyelids, trying to find a sense of stability. As much as she wanted to calm down and think about what to do next—

She couldn't.

It wasn't a quiet cry.

It was ugly, loud, and her shoulders shook as she pushed her head further against her knees, trying to induce the headache further to give her something to forget, and it was then that she realised that there was no tell-tale feeling of a demon nearby.

As much as it made sense, it just made her cry more when she realised that it was her fault.

Chloé's home was supposed to be a safe place, somewhere she could relax and not worry—it was covered in spilled wine, a broken bottle, and enough blood for anyone looking inside to realise that something was very wrong.

She thought the only wrong thing was her.

She knew that she'd done the right thing—

But it didn't feel like it.

The knock came back.

With shaky legs, she used the support of the wall to stand up, almost slipping from the blood covering the floorboards. She didn't bother to look in the mirror to see how wrecked she looked, instead cracking the door open an inch to peer at who was there.

It was Adrien, of course.

The trust he had for her made her eyes tear up more, lower lip wobbling as she opened the door enough to pull him inside before he could greet her.

And when he was in a bloodied hallway, the first thing he did was bring her into a hug, voice cracking as he asked, "Are you okay?"

She couldn't answer that.

The fact that he was asking her that instead of questioning what had happened—prioritising her well-being first—had her holding him tighter, burying her head against his chest and letting her tears fall on his shirt.

He didn't ask any more.

Instead, Adrien held her closer, one hand going up to gently pet her head in the way that he knew she liked, trying to comfort her.

He wasn't mentioning all the blood.

She'd surely smeared him in it.

When he did speak, it was to softly ask, "Are you hurt?"

Trembling, she shook her head.

He pressed a kiss into her hair.

-x-

Adrien held her until she calmed down.

Her eyes were sore.

He went into the bathroom to fetch a roll of toilet roll for her to blow her nose on. And when she looked at him clearly for the first time, she saw the blood that had gotten onto his clothes, standing out against the light material, and she averted her eyes as her stomach lurched.

It was the matter of who's blood it was that was getting to her.

Her sword was left on the floor, blood dried and stained on it by the time she picked it up, knees feeling as weak and heavy as the rest of her body. Marinette stumbled into the bathroom, touching her neck with her free hand as she saw that she had faint red marks on her skin; no sign of nails digging in or the bruises that should've been there from how tightly she'd been held.

Adrien followed her in when she'd left the door open.

His voice was quiet. "Where are we?"

It was a sign of how considerate of her he was that he wasn't demanding answers that she couldn't give. From the pale colour of his skin it was clear that he was scared of all the blood, but he was focused on her first.

She didn't want to say her name. "I live here."

Adrien swallowed, and through the mirror, she could see him avert her eyes.

Marinette threw up in the sink.

Her throat burned in a way that should've been from strangulation—but it hadn't happened. She'd been able to hold her own without the bandalore there, able to fight through her tears and angle the sword just right.

She gagged until there was nothing bile that came out.

When Adrien came back with a glass of water for her, his shoes tracked in blood.

She'd almost forgotten about the kitchen's state.

After she'd clumsily placed the glass on the sink after drinking half of it, he quietly stated, "She's not here."

It wasn't a question.

Marinette's hands fell to hold the edge of the sink "No."

Adrien gently prodded with, "Did she threaten you?"

That was the thing, wasn't it? Chloé knew that she didn't care about herself; that she was fine with getting hurt if she got what she wanted in the end, barely batting an eye at her injuries in the passing months.

"You," she whispered, closing her eyes as she used the sink to hold herself up. "Your parents."

He inhaled sharply. "We were too close."

She swallowed, the pain of her throat welcome. "Yes."

When he crossed the room to stand beside her, gently putting one hand on top of her as he hugged her from behind, resting his head on her shoulder as he pressed a kiss to her neck, she didn't realise how tense she was until she was relaxing.

Adrien's presence was always welcome.

"I'm so sorry," he whispered, thick with emotion that she didn't want to address. "You—you shouldn't have had to do that."

Chloé had never been the plan.

She believed her words as she said, "It was inevitable."

Adrien's breath was warm against her neck. "It—it shouldn't have been."

Her breathing wasn't steady. "It's not your fault."

"It doesn't mater who's fault it is," he said, his voice shaking in that tell-tale way that she knew meant that he was close to tears. "This isn't—it's not like any other time."

Her grip tightened on the sink.

Adrien gently pried one of her hands off of it, holding her bloodied hand in his own as he whispered, "I'm so sorry."

She cried again.

He stayed there, hugging her and didn't protest when she turned around again to bury her head into his chest. At some point they ended up with him sitting on top of the lid of the toilet, pulling her into his lap so they wouldn't have to stand any more, and her breathing finally settled down once she'd stopped crying and instead focused on the feel of his fingers trailing through her hair.

Adrien didn't say anything else; he let her cry and come to terms with her feelings before pushing for any more information.

Her mouth felt dry when she asked, "Did you sneak out?"

"I got Nino to cover for me," he answered easily, fiddling with her hair at the base of her neck. They'd grown out a bit from where she'd hacked at it and it had to be cut shorter to correct the mess. "My parents think he had a fight with Alya."

She breathed out. "He's a good friend."

"Yes," Adrien agreed, murmuring that into the top of her head where he was placing another kiss to her hair. "What do you need me to do?"

Her eyes felt too heavy to stay open. "Sleep."

He didn't protest.

Instead, Adrien helped her up, linking their hands together and guiding her out into the hallway. And when Marinette couldn't help but stare her sword in the puddle of blood on the floor, seeing the splatters that had gotten onto the walls and the front door, Adrien gently asked her which bedroom was hers.

They were still fully dressed when they got into her bed.

Adrien had the sense to take their shoes off, undoing the bag around her chest and placing it on her bedside table so it was within reaching distance if she needed it. The strap around her waist dug in from where it was empty without the sword.

The sun came in through the windows because neither of them had closed the curtains. When she opened her eyes, it felt like she hadn't slept.

Her eyes hurt, her throat felt dry, and she felt dirty when she looked at the dried blood on her skin. Some of it had crusted off onto her bed, tiny flakes on the pillow she'd been using, though it would pale in comparison to the hallway.

Adrien woke up with her, blearily rubbing at his eyes as he sat up.

She felt numb.

Unlike when she couldn't stop crying yesterday, no tears came to her eyes. The usual happiness she'd feel from sleeping beside him—that nagging feeling that they'd get caught that was rivalled by how affection bloomed in her chest from being so close to him for long—wasn't there; instead, she looked at him blankly, not responding to him hugging her as she normally would.

Adrien wasn't offended.

Instead, he asked whether she wanted to shower.

It was a good idea.

That was until she was in there, staring blankly at the tiles as she scrubbed the shampoo in her hair harder than necessary. Her nails couldn't dig into her skin enough to pierce it, but she could feel the pain from pressing down hard, but even that wasn't enough to ground her.

The lack of feeling in her head meant that there was any demons nearby.

She'd expected it, but—

She felt hollow, almost.

It was only when the water started to run cold that she got out. Her fingertips had pruned from being in there too long, the bathroom was fogged up so she couldn't look in the mirror, and she stood there with her wet feet on the tiles until her hair stopped dripping.

She realised she was staring at the wall blankly when Adrien knocked on the door, asking if she was okay.

There wasn't a good answer for that.

There was no feeling of achievement that she'd managed to protect him, that she'd stopped him from being harmed and got rid of any danger; rather, she felt as if she'd failed.

She hadn't expected to care that much.

All that time she'd realised that she liked Chloé, but the extent it went didn't really hit until her blood was all over her hands.

She came out in new clothes with her hands shaking, offering Adrien a pained smile.

He had his bloody clothes on still.

The good part of always wearing oversized shirts to hide her figure meant that they almost fit Adrien. It was tight around his shoulders and didn't quite brush the waistband of his jeans, but it was black and wasn't covered in blood, so that was the important part.

He used wet wipes to clean himself up.

Marinette was quiet.

She was stronger than she was before, but she'd never felt so horribly weak before.

Adrien found cereal in her cupboard and forced a bowl into her hands, telling her that she needed to eat.

She kept it down, somehow.

They didn't talk.

For a while, it was only the sound of them eating filling up the room. Her eyes wandered over to the kitchen, looking at the blood that had swirled in the spilled wine, scattered glass catching the light as the sun shined through the window.

She had to force the words out. "I don't know what to do."

They'd settled back on the sofa at that point. Marinette had her knees up to her chest, hugging them tight while she was leaning against his shoulder, one of his arms wrapped loosely around her. It wasn't an embrace, but it was close.

"We've got a while to figure it out," he assured her.

It didn't feel like it.

The tears didn't come, but it sure felt like they did. Her arms felt heavy as she pushed her hair out of her face before she stared at her hand, noting the blood that had gotten under her nails and hadn't managed to be cleaned despite the length of her shower.

And as she looked at the remnants of blood, she came to the realisation of, "I can't stay here."

Adrien didn't sound surprised. "Do you have anywhere to go?"

She didn't.

Fu was out of the question. She had money, no bank account to make transactions, and the best course of action would be to live day-by-day. Although she was small and looked younger than her actual age, motels were sure to let her in to rent a room if she paid with cash outright. Hopefully, she didn't look like someone needed to call child services to help her when someone saw her any more.

"Not here, I-I can't—" Marinette cut herself off with a sharp inhale, squeezing her eyes shut. "She'll know."

"She won't," Adrien assured her. There wasn't confidence in his voice, but he sounded more certain than her from the way his voice wasn't wobbling from emotion. He twisted his body until he could put his hands on her shoulder, turning her to look at him properly. "She won't know a thing, not unless you tell her."

She let out a strangled noise. "I'm bad at lying."

"Don't," he advised, his expression earnest and open. "She won't—she won't know, okay? You can just say that—that you want to try and live by yourself?"

"I was there before," she weakly pointed out. "When—when it happened."

It was a sign that she wasn't okay when she was stuttering as much as him.

His words came out in a whisper. "She is not your responsibility."

And when she smiled, it didn't reach her eyes. "Isn't she?"

She'd taken to the part of acting as Chloé's bodyguard easily; it barely changed the dynamic between them, instead forcing Chloé to be careful about going out alone for something as trivial as buying new make-up when there were countless other demons in the city that were stronger than her.

With a second death, it took years for a demon to regain a second heart.

It was her fault.

Chloé would wake up without a clue that Marinette had betrayed her.

As cruel as it was for demons to forget the reason for their death, it was as horrific as angels only having one life.

Unless they were all reborn as Marinette, unaware of what they were unless they tangled with the supernatural world—

That was all a theory, though.

Adrien didn't look away from her eyes. "It's not your fault."

It was her fault for caring.

"I'll—I'll do whatever you need me to, okay? If you have to hide in my bedroom or I have to sneak you into the bathroom to have a shower, I'm here. I'm not—I'm not going anywhere, okay?" Adrien rambled on, his concern clear as he gripped her shoulders tighter, trying to get his point across. "I won't... I'm not going to let her hurt you. I mean, I don't know _how_ to make that happen, but I will."

Chloé hadn't turned on her when she was questioning her intentions.

"She won't," Marinette whispered, averting her eyes.

"I'll keep you safe," he babbled on, sounding almost frantic as he cupped her face and made her meet his gaze again. "We'll work something out. You'll be safe. She's not going to touch you."

He didn't understand that Chloé hadn't done a thing.

It wasn't like she was really able to do it any more, not when knives didn't have the same effect and couldn't cut through her skin completely when pressure was added. As hard as Chloé could punch, she wouldn't break her ribs any more.

"I'm so sorry," he repeated, tears appearing in his eyes as his expression crumpled. "You shouldn't—you shouldn't have had to do that for _me_. I never wanted to hurt you."

"You didn't," she assured him in a whisper, leaning into his touch.

He clenched his eyes shut with his brow furrowed, trying to hold back his tears.

"I did this," she stated, no tears coming to her own eyes. Her voice sounded hollow to her own ears. "I caused this, not you."

He sniffed. "I want to protect you, but I can't."

She quietly told him, "I don't expect you to."

It was the realisation that he was crying for her that made her feel less numb. Adrien should've been terrified about crossing the city to come to a random address, but he'd trusted her without question, had been on the other side of the door as she pierced her sword through her best friend's hearts.

He'd been nearby, trusting her.

Chloé trusting her was how she ended up in ashes.

"I can't do anything for you." His voice cracked. "I'm not—I'm not like you. I'm not... built to fight demons."

She swallowed. "I've never wanted that."

"But I do." Adrien took in a stuttered breath. "I want to be the one to keep you safe, to—to be there when you need support. I'm terrified out of my mind whenever you're fighting, scared that you won't give me that text that you're okay—and it's all because of _me_."

Turning her head, she pressed a kiss to his palm. "I'd do anything for you."

His tears were trailing down his cheeks at that point. And when he opened his eyes, they were watery and obstructed by tears that hadn't left yet. "But I can't for you," he whispered, hands dropping down between them, no longer cupping her face. "I can't... do anything for you."

"Adrien—"

"You fight for me," he choked out, wiping at his eyes with his palm, spreading tears into his eyelashes. "You do so _much_ and all I cause is pain. You—you're hurting because you love me."

She placed a hand on his knee. "I'm fine."

It sounded hollow to her own ears.

His voice quivered as he said, "I want you to be happy."

And although she felt numb, couldn't feel the usual happiness that she did when Adrien aimed that sunny smile at her, she reminded him, "You make me happy."

In response to that, he leaned forward to rest his forehead against hers, closing his eyes.

And in that moment, she was reminded that she'd never felt for someone as strongly as she did for him.

"There's no demon."

It wasn't either of them that had spoken.

Marinette jerked away, throwing her arm in front of Adrien's chest in a protective stance as they were both startled.

There was someone standing in front of them.

The door had to still be locked—from the inside with a bolt that was unable to be opened any other way—and when she made eye contact with the man that was looking at them with a furrowed brow, there was a sudden feeling.

It was like when she gazed at Adrien and felt that warmth in her chest that she felt with affection, but—

There wasn't the wrongness that she associated with a demon.

The angel stood there, hands in the pockets of his jeans, a perplexed expression crossing his face as he had his eyes solely on Adrien. There was no anger and uncaring violence that she'd always been warned about, none of the sudden movements that lived up to the stories that Chloé had heard.

"Do you have a death wish?" the man questioned, tone sounding almost bored. "I can't think of any other reason you'd call me when you know what demons want to do to you."

Adrien didn't say anything; instead, he stared at the intruder, eyes as damp as his cheeks, mouth open with no words escaping.

Her sword was still in the hallway, forgotten and abandoned in the mess that had been left behind, and Chloé's blade was hidden in her room somewhere. For as much money as she'd paid for it, it had been stashed away and forgotten.

"Not just demons," Marinette coldly interrupted, standing to her feet and trying to block Adrien from view. It worked a lot better when he was sitting rather than across a parking lot in clear view. "Isn't that right?"

The angel tilted his head, dark-coloured hair almost falling into his eyes from the movement.

He was dressed more casually than the one she'd met in the park with Nino. There wasn't a wrinkle on his skin, though his t-shirt was creased and had rips across the front, much like fashion she'd seen around their school.

Adrien's voice cracked as he asked, "Did I—did I call you?"

"Yes," the angel confirmed. "You were scared of a demon hurting your friend. It seems I jumped to conclusions and assumed that you meant that literally."

Her chest felt tight.

The angel wasn't _moving_. He was standing there, hands still tucked in his pockets as he looked at the two of them quizzically, as though he was trying to solve a puzzle on the newspaper.

She bluntly asked, "Why aren't you killing him?"

The angel blinked. "Do you want me to?"

She was at a loss on how to answer that.

However, it seemed Adrien wasn't. From where he was still behind her, he croaked out, "But—but isn't that what you want to do?"

"Sometimes," the angel replied, leaning his head to the side to click his neck before repeating it with the other. "I was under the impression I was here to help, not slaughter an innocent."

Was everything she'd been told a lie?

Sure, she knew that demons blended in and lived like any other human for the most part—

But this angel seemed so civil and fed up.

Even through her frazzled emotions, she was able to feel a deep sense of confusion.

It was hard to believe. "You're not going to kill him?"

The angel finally made eye contact with her with a sigh. "No, I've already said that."

While she could feel there was something different about him, he wasn't showing any signs of noticing the same about her.

Marinette scrambled to find the right words. "If he's innocent, then why do you—your kind kill others like him?"

The angel gave her a flat look, making himself appear more tired. "Why does it matter to you?"

She bristled.

"She's been killing demons because of me," Adrien timidly spoke up. And as she looked over her shoulder, she saw him leaning to the side to peer up at the angel curiously, though his body language was anything but relaxed. "That's why I-I called for help. Accidentally. I was scared of her getting hurt."

"You don't need to tell him this," Marinette muttered, staring at the angel's hands where they were in his pockets. Although she'd been told that angels had weapons to fight demons, there was no sign of one on him.

"An aspiring hunter, are you?" There was nothing of interest in his tone. "As thrilling as that is, I'd advise you _not_ to call anyone else unless you do want to die."

"Would you?" Adrien dared to ask. "If I called again, would you kill me?"

The angel shrugged. "Depends on my mood."

And wasn't that _strange_?

Her fractured memories were filled with warmth and love, the sweet scent of flowers and the feeling of a hand holding hers, yet the stories were all filled with callousness and violence.

"Before—before you go," Adrien stuttered out, awkwardly getting out from behind her to stand up, not standing in front of her. "Can I ask you something? Please?"

The angel tilted his head. "I suppose so."

Adrien looked at her and bit his lip.

Marinette didn't understand what was going on in his head.

He breathed out audibly. "Can angels be reborn?"

It felt like she'd been slapped. "Adrien—"

"No," the angel interrupted, running a hand through his hair in such a human-like action that it caught her off-guard. "It's one and done, kid."

Her throat felt tight.

"Are you sure?" Adrien questioned, a type of desperation coming through that she usually only felt in her low moments. "Not—not at all?"

"Yes," the angel confirmed, a smile curling on his lips and not reaching his eyes. "I've lost countless friends through the years. I think I'd know if they came back."

But she—

"Okay," Adrien whispered, sounding ever-so-disappointed as he took her hand gently in hers, threading their fingers together.

She squeezed his hand lightly to try and comfort him.

Then, Adrien spoke up again, "Can I know your name?"

The angel blinked.

"You're the first I've met," he quickly explained, adjusting his grip on her hand nervously. "And you—you didn't kill me. I'd like to remember you."

The angel pursed his lips, considering.

There was a beat of silence.

"Luka."

She clutched at her head.

"_I'm going to Luka's! I'll be back later, okay?_"

There was no images attached, nothing to indicate that it was anything but a trigger—

And for once, there was a hopeful feeling blossoming in her chest as she realised that the indifferent angel in front of her was willingly answering questions.

With her palm against her temple, pressing into her skin and trying to dull the ache, she addressed the angel with, "Do you know me?"

Luka frowned, giving no answer other than his expression.

Adrien squeezed her hand in support.

Unsure on how to approach the subject, she started with, "I've—I need to ask, if you kill enough demons, does that... change you?"

Luka tilted his head. "It doesn't change you."

She swallowed.

That was the answer she was looking for, wasn't it? It wasn't because of all the pain that she'd been through, not caused due to all the hearts she'd sliced through with her sword—

It had to be connected to her memories.

"My name's Marinette," she said.

Luka squinted, the human-like reaction surprising her again. It shouldn't have, not when she'd seen demons do countless things and blend into society perfectly, but there was something different about it being someone that was apparently so scarce that the information about them was limited.

"I'm—I've got memories?" she lamely continued, hand falling down to her side, holding onto the bottom of her oversized t-shirt for a sense of stability.

"Memories," Luka repeated, dubious as he took a step forward.

He was taller than Adrien.

"Your hair is... grey," he commented, going as far as to reach out and touch a strand curiously.

Her usual reaction would've been to slap the hand away, but from how Adrien's hold on her was tightening from how close the angel had gotten, she wasn't going to antagonise him when he wasn't violent.

"It's dyed."

And as Luka stared at her, a blank expression that looked borderline terrifying from how much it wasn't revealing about what he was thinking, Marinette shifted on the spot before reaching up and tucking some hair behind her ear, fidgeting.

Luka's voice was as emotionless as his face. "How old are you?"

"Seventeen," Adrien answered for her. "We think."

"You think," Luka repeated, not looking away from her. "You don't know your birthday? That's a thing humans like to keep track of."

"No," Marinette confirmed, licking her lips nervously.

All of a sudden, Luka laughed. He ran a hand through his hair as he took a step back, shaking his head in what seemed to be disbelief, showing more emotion that he had the entire time he'd been there. The laughter continued, started to sound hollow the longer it went on, and Adrien stiffened at her side, clearly intimidated from the sudden change in mood.

Marinette was curious.

Then, Luka asked, "Your hair's black, isn't it?"

Her brow furrowed. "Yes."

He laughed again, going as far as to throw his head back.

Adrien tugged her hand to make her take a step back, the back of her legs pressed against the bottom of the couch.

"Of course you'd do this," Luka muttered, only just loud enough for them to hear. He'd closed his eyes and let out a sigh, no longer laughing. "You _idiot—_"

Whatever he was about to say was cut off by him breathing out audibly, shoulders moving along as the deep breath escaped him.

"The memories are coming back, aren't they?" Luka bluntly asked, opening his eyes to look at her once more. "That's what you meant before."

It was a confirmation, wasn't it? "Yes."

"We thought you were dead—I thought you were," he continued, taking a step towards her. "You don't remember me, do you?"

All she could say to that was, "I went to your house once."

He snorted. "Sure, that's one way to put it."

Adrien spoke up beside her. "So—so she really was an angel?"

"Was?" Luka raised his eyebrows. "The only reason you're getting these back is because you're becoming one again."

Her chest felt tight.

Adrien's voice cracked. "What?"

"Fallen angels don't stay human for long if they get tangled up with the supernatural," Luka replied, gesturing towards her with his open hand. "You've killed demons, yes?"

And when she spoke, her voice sounded foreign to her own ears. "A lot."

There was evidence of that in the hallway; the messy remains of her best friend soaking into the floorboards, staining the wood, and drying horribly around the edges.

Luka walked forward until they were almost chest-to-chest, ignoring Adrien at her side and staring down at her instead. He spoke in a whisper as he said, "When your memories come back, come see me."

"See you?" she questioned, baffled.

He placed a heavy hand on her shoulder. "You'll know."

And then, he was gone.

There was no evidence of him being there in the first place. When he'd left, there had been no wind moving her hair, no smoke like magicians used when they made it appear that they'd vanished from the spot, and it was as utterly baffling as the first time she'd seen it in the park.

Adrien was there, coming to stand in front of her and whispering words that she couldn't quite make out over the sound of her heartbeat.

She threw up in the sink.

-x-

Adrien had been the sensible one.

He'd gently guided her to her bedroom, searching around until he could find a bag to start fitting her belongings in. He folded her clothes ever-so-carefully, trying to fit as many as he could inside before he had to reach for a second bag to fit in her dated laptop. The pictures of him and Aloys were placed inside, along with her bundles of cash that she'd stashed under her bed, and he'd quietly asked her whether she wanted him to wash her blade before she put it away.

As low as she was feeling, she didn't want Adrien to have to bend down in front of a puddle of blood to retrieve something for her.

She stared at the water running over the sword until it turned clear, the sound of it filling the room and giving her something to focus on.

He was the one to look up a cheap place for her to stay for the upcoming days. At first, he'd said that she could see about staying with Alya, but the thought of trying to explain everything that had happened was enough to make her sweat.

For a few hours, he stayed with her in her room. They didn't talk much, instead leaning on each other and staring blankly at the small television that was provided.

As lenient as his parents had started to be when she was involved, he couldn't stay forever. There was still the lie that Alya and Nino had had a fight, so he left with a chaste kiss to her lips, promising that he'd text her as soon as he got home.

She told him he was crazy for thinking that she'd let him go alone after that.

Unlike Chloé's, the motel wasn't on the opposite side of the city.

She walked him to his door.

Adrien tried to make her laugh by saying he could finally wear a shirt that he could fit in.

When she came back later that evening when his parents were asleep, Adrien greeted her with hot chocolate.

It took some time, but she started to feel more.

Marinette didn't go out at night to hunt demons.

She avoided the spots of the city that she used to frequent with Chloé. The twenty-four hour mark passed and with no text or calling coming through to her phone, her uneasiness grew. She didn't want to be the first to reach out—

Marinette wasn't good at lying.

So, she planned not to.

Adrien supported her decision to distance herself. He didn't try to tell her what to do; instead asking whether that was what she really wanted, and she'd stared down at her clean hands before saying she wasn't sure what she wanted at all.

She did what she was supposed to; going to school, replying to texts from Alya and Nino, doing homework in Adrien's living room where his mother questioned whether she was feeling unwell because she looked under the weather—

She wasn't doing good.

Not when she couldn't stop thinking about the implications that she was becoming an angel again—that she was apparently stuck in a cycle where her involvement with demons meant that she was becoming what she used to be.

That Luka used to know her.

There was more she wanted to ask, to know whether they were friends or—

She had to assume that she was going to regain all of her memories. Adrien had frantically researched it again to see whether they'd missed something, whether they could trigger more of them, but the steady pace of her past-self's words floating through her head and the faint images of memories continued to pass by, not influenced by her want to know.

While she'd come to the conclusion that she was what her past-self hated, she wondered what would happen when she fully regained her memories. She wondered if she'd feel self-loathing for herself, whether the memories would be more dominant and be the ones that she felt more strongly.

It was obvious she didn't know anything when she said things like that aloud to Adrien.

He wasn't much better.

They were as clueless as each other.

She knew that eighteenth birthdays were supposed to be a big thing, but that wasn't what Adrien wanted. He asked to only spend it with his closest friends, replying with a shrug when their new class-mates asked whether he was doing anything special, so they were in his living room with a cake again.

Eighteen meant that he could drink.

However, he was the oldest of the four of them, so his father only allowed them to have a small glass of wine each, insisting that it had to be the good kind for them to fully enjoy it.

And when she was passed the glass, she stared at the dark liquid blankly.

Her stomach tightened when she realised it was the same colour wine that had smashed over Chloé's kitchen floor the last time she saw her.

She made it to the toilet to throw up.

Adrien's mother fretted, asking whether she should call her grandfather to pick her up early because she was ill. Adrien had to talk her down and assure her that Marinette was fine, just that she hadn't been feeling well earlier.

It wasn't a lie.

The weeks started to take a toll on her.

She was getting food from the supermarket. Although she wasn't cooking in the first place, that option was available any more with the motel room she was staying in. There was a small mini-fridge in there that she stored a small bottle of milk, and as helpful as that, her diet was turning terrible again.

Sometimes, she picked up food before visiting Adrien—as scentless as possible, so his parents wouldn't wake up suspicious from the smell—but for the most part, she found it hard to eat.

Although her sword stayed on her, she only went out at night to steal more wallets. She hit it big one night when she nabbed someone's bag after they'd walked out of the bank, not expecting the thousands in cash that greeted her.

She was making excuses not to meet up with Alya when Adrien wasn't there.

As much as she pestered her, Marinette didn't tell her what was going on. Any time she thought about it she clammed up, knowing that the questions would only lead to her to spiralling and feeling worse.

She'd never cared so much before.

When Adrien tentatively pointed out that she might be traumatised from what had happened, she'd laughed.

He didn't.

It seemed so—

Trivial.

It wasn't something that she'd had to deal with before. She'd hurt countless people, literally cut body parts off of a demon while they were still alive, yet Chloé's death was what had gotten to her.

She didn't remember what it had felt like to lose Aloys.

And yet, she was comparing the two. The fact that Chloé was up and walking the city without contacting made her feel mixed emotions. As horrified as she was that she'd ended her life, the fact that Chloé hadn't reached out hurt more.

Marinette had left.

Chloé didn't know what had happened, but she knew that she was gone.

Marinette started to close herself off.

The effort that went into texting her friends and trying to keep up the pretence that she was fine was exhausting. In the hours when she was alone in the motel, staring up at the ceiling and waiting for time to pass by, she spent it in silence. The headphones she always used for music were still tucked away in the bag that Adrien had packed them in, her laptop wasn't touched for anything more than the homework that she had to do.

The dark circles under her eyes matched Adrien's.

His was because he prolonged going to bed because he was busy reading, while hers was because she tossed and turned, unable to sleep.

He offered for her to sneak into his bed and sleep there with him, but she rejected it.

She didn't want him to be there when she woke up in a cold sweat.

It was strange, that was the best way to put it.

Months ago, it seemed that her life was on track, but that wasn't the case any more. She got a text on her phone saying that her plan had been cancelled. As much as she'd expected that it would happen, it was a confirmation that Chloé was alive and actively doing things—and all she could think was that the last time she'd seen her, she'd seen her breath leave her lungs before she turned into ash.

She didn't sleep well that night.

The following afternoon, she sorted her phone out so she could top it up with cash with a card.

Adrien was the reason she wasn't falling behind at school. Instead of her walking off to the library to leave him with their class-mates, he was declining to sit with them and making sure she ate some of his lunch.

It didn't escape her notice that his portions had gotten bigger.

When she pointed it out, he simply said he was a growing boy.

It wasn't until the winter holidays that she realised that she'd lost weight.

She could see her ribs again.

When Adrien started to extend the offer for her to come over almost daily during their time off, she was hesitant to accept it. Although she was handing more money over to the front desk and keeping the same room since she'd first moved in, she felt overwhelmed when his parents kept asking whether she was okay and inviting her for dinner despite them offering her food whenever she walked into their home.

Being with him was her sense of happiness, though. She lived through him, slumping against him in a half-hearted embrace and closing her eyes, feeling ever-so-close to that warmth she felt when her distant memories went through her head.

She wondered whether angels could choose what age they could look like.

Luka had looked to be in his early twenties, scruffy-haired and in casual clothing that would've blended in with others. There hadn't been anything about him that had been breath-taking or a tell-tale sign that he was something different; rather, he'd blended in well, not arousing any suspicion.

Wasn't that her goal before Alya had befriended her?

For all her questions, she didn't have a lot of answers.

So, she focused on Adrien. In the two months since she'd left Chloé's, she'd only killed one demon because she'd caught them looking at him in interest.

Her sense hadn't improved.

And yet, she wondered when other angels would be able to look at her and realise that she belonged—that she was one of them. That was what was happening to her, wasn't it?

Whenever she saw Adrien for the first time each day, she stared, trying to figure out if there was anything other than the utter affection she had for him. There had to be some kind of sense to realise what he was, some way to identify him from the other humans around him.

It bothered her to no end.

When she visited Adrien in the evenings, never staying the night, he was happy as long as she ate while she was there.

She wasn't oblivious to her weight loss. When she saw Alya and Nino for the first time in almost a month, they'd looked at her in concern.

It made her chest ache.

Marinette shied away from their concern, not looking them in the eyes for too long, keeping their interactions clipped and straight to the point. For the most part, her smiles were for Adrien's those days, except for the rare few that his parents had managed to coax one out of her by teasing Adrien.

Alya bluntly asked her if she was depressed.

She didn't have a good answer for that.

Her feet felt heavy on her way back.

The room wasn't considered a home, not when she could barely sleep at night. Adrien had tried to cheer her up by mentioning that if they both got into the same university, he'd happily try and convince his parents to let them get a place together. It seemed so far in the distance instead of in less than a year.

It wasn't obvious someone was following her until she paused to tie her shoe laces, glancing behind her to see if anyone would bump into her when she crouched. And it was when she made eye contact with a woman barely a metre from her that there was that sudden sense of realisation that she wasn't human.

"Oh," Marinette breathed, wide-eyed.

It wasn't a sudden rush of consciousness being shoved into her, not like she'd thought it would be. Rather, it felt like everything clicked into place as she stared, standing in the middle of the pathway as the woman—the _angel—_also paused, looking at her curiously.

There was nothing aggressive in her expression.

Marinette breathed in deeply, scrunching her eyes shut as she pressed her palms into them, soothing the flare of pain that had appeared in her head, trying to sort out all the information that had just appeared.

She felt dizzy.

And then, there was a gentle hand touching her shoulders, keeping her steady.

And as she opened her bleary eyes, her vision wasn't too unfocused to recognise the facial features that were in front of her.

She'd seen them in the mirror countless times over the years.

"Bridgette," she breathed, conflicted on how to react.

Because she remembered; she recalled all the times her sister held her hand, passed up hanging out with anyone else to spend time with her, and helped Marinette come out of her shell to tentatively befriend Luka when they were young when their teachers expressed concern for her not having any other friends.

She remembered the happiness, but it didn't outweigh the harsh life she'd had.

It wasn't that she suddenly turned into a different person.

"Marinette," her sister whispered, barely audible. "You're—it's really you."

It didn't erase who she'd come to be.

Marinette took a step back, making it so the hands on her fell down, and she was shaking her head, reaching up and gripping at the roots of her hair to try and ground herself. But what she was feeling was too overwhelming, too sudden to come to terms with all of it, and she tugged harder, almost wanting the headache to come back to distract her.

She wasn't seventeen any more.

Was she?

Her body was—

"Marinette," Bridgette said, voice shaking. "_Mari_—"

It was her coming face-to-face with her mistakes that she'd been able to live without for years.

She'd traded all the happiness and memories for a chance; leaving behind the ones close to her to think that she'd perished, thinking that she wouldn't have to be faced with it again.

With a sigh, she straightened out, opening her eyes to see the reflection of herself; the blue eyes that had always matched her own, the hair that they'd both inherited and had haunted her for months, enough for her to butcher hers with her sword again.

And when she spoke, her voice sounded cold to her own ears. "I won't apologise."

Bridgette didn't flinch. She stared at her with shining eyes, looking close to tears and so vulnerable—

The opposite of the images of angels that she'd been told.

Because she would know, wouldn't she?

"I thought you died," Bridgette whispered.

Bridgette wasn't dressed for the winter. She was in a sundress, one that skimmed her knees and showed her shivering arms, and her nose had started to turn red from the cold. She hadn't been prepared for the change of weather from coming down to the surface.

"I did," she bluntly replied, unwinding the scarf from her neck and holding it out, offering it to her. "I left."

Bridgette took ahold of the scarf with both hands, hugging it to her chest instead of putting it on. She looked to be on the verge of tears still.

She was wearing flip-flops.

Marinette had two people in her life that insisted on wearing them, then.

"We need to talk," Marinette said, pushing her short hair away from her face. "I'm staying close to here. You can borrow some of my clothes."

They didn't talk as they walked.

Marinette refused to look at her.

Her fingertips curled around the bottom of her sleeves, regretting forgetting her gloves before going out. She'd been too absent-minded, grabbing her things and running outside to meet up with Adrien to feel that small bit of happiness that he could offer her.

As much as she remembered her compassion and kindness she'd had for years—centuries—before, it didn't cancel out the life she'd lived as a human. That life wouldn't be erased in a blink of an eye, nor would she forget the lessons that she'd learned.

There wasn't a flip that was switched that made her realise that she was a terrible person. Marinette had accepted that since she was little and realised how different she was from others, and her lack of caring for others was how she'd gotten so far.

Well, other than the setback of slaughtering her best friend.

She'd never befriended a demon before.

Some had been kind, curious and wanting to know more about her than trying to rip her skin with their supernatural strength before realising that they really did need weapons to cause her permanent harm, while others had been judgemental and didn't want to listen to a word that she'd said.

Wasn't it funny that the best interactions she'd had with a demon had come when she'd been human?

As they wandered to her door at the motel, she got her key out of her pocket, opening the door and stepping through first. She didn't care about the mud that she was tracking in, nor the wet footprints that were pressing into the carpet.

In the past, she would've made as little mess as possible, not wanting to inconvenience anyone.

She sat down on the edge of the bed that took up most of the room.

Bridgette was standing there, hovering and looking uncertain. She was shivering still, cold getting to her, and her cheeks had taken on the same red as the end of her nose.

Her sister looked to be the same age as Luka; taller, but not by much, filled out without looking horribly thin, and her skin and long hair were clearly taken care of.

Bridgette had always cared about her appearance.

It's how she would've looked if she hadn't been half-starving and relying on herself. Marinette was sure that the circles under her eyes were present, standing out against her pale and sickly-looking skin, and the oversized clothes only emphasised how unhealthy she looked.

And when she took her jacket off, rubbing her numb hands together for a bit of warmth, she could see it in Bridgette's expression when she realised how awful her appearance was in comparison.

"Marinette—"

"Clothes," she interrupted, gesturing with her head towards her bags bundled in the corner. The ones she wore and washed at the laundromat nearby always made it back into the bag instead of in the drawers provided with the room. "There should be some that fit you."

Bridgette pursed her lips. "_Marinette_—"

"My feet are the same size," she interjected, giving her a blank look. "I've got another pair of trainers that you can wear."

With her hands clenched into fists at her sides, Bridgette exclaimed, "I don't care about your clothes!"

It wasn't like before.

Bridgette had always doted on her, taken on the responsibilities while they were still learning how to live at first, and even when Marinette had proven that she was strong and capable, that had never changed.

"You're not dressed for the weather," she pointed out. "If you want to sit here freezing your fucking ass off, go for it."

Bridgette's eyes widened. "What?"

It took her a moment to realise that she'd never used to swear.

Chloé had really influenced that part of her vocabulary.

She just raised her eyebrows.

Bridgette stared, open-mouthed with no words escaping until it was clear that she wasn't caving and correcting her behaviour. With a frown, Bridgette picked up the first clothes that she touched, taking out a pair of socks that had long since felt soft from how often they'd been washed, and took the only other shoes into the small bathroom.

She didn't lock the door.

Marinette buried her face in her hands, scratching at her skin for the pain to ground her.

There was that lingering resentment burning in her chest, a feeling that she hadn't felt for her sister for seventeen years. The sudden swell of emotions was hard to understand, but it didn't push aside what she'd already been feeling. Marinette was as sure as before about where her priorities stood.

The thought of Adrien had her taking in a sharp breath.

When Bridgette came out, it was almost like looking at her reflection from months ago; the long hair that was in good condition, the oversized clothes that were still too big despite Bridgette being a bit taller and more filled out than her, and it made her look younger and less mature than her initial outfit.

It was Bridgette that started talking first.

Sitting down closely beside her, so their knees were almost touching, Bridgette put one hand on the bed to lean forward as she pleaded, "Talk to me."

She pursed her lips.

"Please," Bridgette whispered, her voice cracking from emotions. "You—I thought you were dead, Mari. You didn't... you didn't even tell me before you went. I came home to find you gone."

Marinette wondered if that was how she sounded.

Were their voices similar?

There wasn't a fraction of the emotion in her own. "How many days?"

Bridgette stilled. "What?"

"How many days did it take for you to realise?" she clarified, looking her in the eyes. They were shimmering with unshed tears, an emotional response that she was familiar with. "We were rarely there at the same time, near the end."

"I don't—"

"I didn't do it to spite you, in case you came to that conclusion," Marinette interrupted, shifting until she was sitting with her legs crossed, facing her, feeling far more relaxed than she should've. "It was never about you."

Bridgette swallowed. "You left me."

She tilted her head. "I left everyone."

"But we—" Bridgette raised a shaky hand to wipe her eyes with her palm. It caused her make-up to smear, a dark smudge unattractively standing out on her pale skin. "We were always a pair, you know? I thought—I was alone."

Marinette bluntly replied, "I felt like that anyway."

Bridgette flinched.

It wasn't like she didn't understand.

With her new perspective on life, she thought her past actions had been foolish and stubborn—clearly a trait that she couldn't leave behind, not like her empathy.

"You didn't care," she said, pulling the sleeve of her shirt down over her hand, curling her fingers around it for comfort. "None of you did, did you?"

And when Bridgette spoke, her contempt was portrayed in more than just her voice. She flung her hand out and gestured to the doorway that they'd come through, scrunching her facial features up in distaste as she asked, "You fell for—for _them_?"

But it wasn't really a question, was it?

"You didn't care," she repeated.

They were two opposites; Bridgette was still crying, her voice wobbling when she spoke, while Marinette was cold and closed off, surely matching her expression.

"I thought our treatment of humans was cruel," Marinette stated, nails digging into her sleeve. "It was a gradual thing, wasn't it? And all of you—you didn't care. You ignored their calls, and the ones that responded only did it out of spite, too absorbed with trying to one-up demons to take care in our surroundings like before."

Bridgette choked out, "We aren't all you."

"No," she agreed, an audible breath escaping her. "But that was the problem, wasn't it?"

"What does it matter?" Bridgette boldly asked, not backing down from the argument that had become exhausting. "They're nothing compared to us in the long-run. We outlive them!"

"It was our job to protect them," she replied with a clipped tone.

"_Was_," Bridgette repeated, stubbornly crossing her arms, body language screaming that she wasn't backing down. "There's no one there to enforce it any more, so what's the point? I'm not going to waste my time to make sure humans are happy when they don't give me anything back in return."

"Look." Marinette's shoulders slumped as she sighed. "I don't fucking care any more, okay? It's been years—I've got a new life now."

It wasn't something she would've ever said before.

And from how Bridgette eyed her warily, clearly not believing that the words had left her, she had the same thought. "You don't care?"

She pushed her short hair away from her face. "I'm not the same, Bri."

The nickname only made the way Bridgette's face crumpled even worse.

"But you're an angel again," Bridgette all but mumbled, the fight leaving her as she twisted around to copy how she was sitting, crossing her legs and clasping her hands in her lap. "That meant—you still wanted to help people, didn't you? Even when you weren't aware of it."

Marinette laughed.

Bridgette just looked confused.

"I don't," she denied, averting her gaze to stare down at her pale hands, inspecting her black nails that hid the blood that might've been underneath. From how little she'd been killing, they might've been clean. "There's only one person I want to protect now."

"Mari—"

It was with a steady heartbeat that she met her sister's gaze, coldly telling her, "If you touch him, I will kill you."

Bridgette didn't say anything.

Instead, she stared; disbelief clear on her expression, tears readily appearing in her eyes and building up. Marinette didn't give in and take back the comments, not when her chest felt tight with what she was sure was guilt.

Before, she would've done anything for Bridgette.

That wasn't the case any more.

When Bridgette spoke, her voice cracked. "You're still choosing them."

"No." She tilted her head. "I'm choosing him."

"All of this for a—a boy?" Bridgette pushed out, sounding breathless as she rapidly gestured between the two of them. "You're pushing me aside _again_?"

It was petty when she said, "You pushed me aside first."

Bridgette's response was to sob.

And before she could say anything—no matter if it was a scathing comment or one of comfort—Bridgette was gone the next moment. The only evidence that she was there was from the wrinkles on the duvet and the clothes that had been left behind in the bathroom.

She stared at the duvet for longest then necessary until her breathing evened out.

And that night, when she stared up at the ceiling with sleep escaping her, the tightness of her chest was worse.

Adrien wishing her a good night didn't relieve the pressure.


	5. 05

**AN: **I originally uploaded four + five as one chapter but had to split them. If you read the original four that was up for an hour(?) you've read it all. You can find upcoming teasers for stories and ask questions on my tumblr (_xiueryn_).

_Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Chat Noir © Thomas Astruc_

It appeared when she made it close to his house, a couple of steps in his front garden before she got to the porch.

Marinette stilled, breathless from the feeling that she hadn't experienced for years.

There was an awareness, one that had her turning her head and staring up at his window and knowing that he was inside. There wasn't any other way to explain it than just _knowing_ where he was from such a short distance.

It wasn't as long range as detecting demons, but it was definitely accurate.

Adjusting her hat, she knocked on his front door.

Barely a few moments had passed before his mother was opening it with a smile that was meant for her, no surprise in her expression as she ushered in inside, offering a hot drink to warm her up and gesturing for her to join Adrien in his bedroom after hanging her coat up on a free hook.

There was no demand to keep the door open, not when Adrien had been told that for years and he still complied.

After she'd climbed the stairs and gently nudged his door open, she could see Adrien on his bed, Plagg sat on his stomach and kneading his shirt despite Adrien prodding his paws in an attempt to get his claws to stop ruining his t-shirts. As much as he complained about Plagg being evil, he adored him and let him get away with everything.

She smiled, watching them.

Plagg reached out with his paw and put it on Adrien's nose, digging his claws into his skin instead.

Adrien pulled a face. "Rude."

At first, she'd been too awkward to talk to Plagg, finding it strange to try and hold conversations with him, even when he trilled back in response—something that always made Adrien happy when it happened.

It was only when Plagg looked up and noticed her that Adrien realised that she was there.

He leaned his head back further, looking at her from upside down, and beamed. "What are you doing creeping in the doorway?"

Her feelings hadn't changed.

Even with the faint memories of all those years of life in another place, the affection she had for him hadn't disappeared. She wanted to hold him, to feel the warmth of his hands as he pressed a kiss to her forehead in the way he always did when they were together, and with the realisation that that wasn't going to change when everything else did—

She smiled right back.

Marinette sat down on the bed beside them, not hesitating to reach out and pet Plagg.

"Hi," Adrien greeted, sounding as happy as his smile looked. "I hope you're hungry because my mother's going to use the excuse of you being a test subject to try out a load of stuff she's baking. Apparently, I'm too biased because I like almost everything she makes."

She laughed. "Almost?"

"That's not the point." He sniffed. "I think she's going to give you leftovers to take back, too. Something about making a good impression on your—well, non-existent grandfather."

She hummed, petting Plagg one last time before her hand wandered up to run through Adrien's hair, pushing it away from his face and showing the red marks on one of his cheeks where he'd been resting on the duvet. "My favourite grandparent."

"How are you?" he questioned, gently taking ahold of her hand to press a kiss to her exposed palm before holding it against his cheek. "You look... a little down."

There wasn't any point of avoiding it.

Adrien had been someone she'd trusted for years, and with her situation how it was, he was the only one that she trusted to talk to about it.

She swallowed. "I have something to tell you."

"Is it something good or bad?" Adrien questioned, holding onto Plagg as he sat up, the cat sliding down his chest lazily to land on his lap and stretch out, content with the new position when it was combined with being cradled in Adrien's arms. "I need to be prepared for my reaction. You know I'm shit at giving advice."

Marinette laughed, fidgeting and pulling her sleeve down. "I don't need advice."

"You don't need me now?" He gasped, exaggerating his shock. "That's a real low blow, you know. You're making me feel very useless."

She patted his knee. "Your job is to look pretty."

"I'm always pretty," Adrien mumbled, running his fingers through Plagg's fur. "That's, like, my best quality, I'll have you know."

"No, that's being cute," she corrected.

"Is what you had to tell me?" he questioned, squinting. "That you want to flirt with me? Because I'm not complaining. I enjoy it very much."

"I wish," she muttered.

"Take your time," Adrien quietly told her, staring down at his cat with a smile. "I never want you to feel pressured around me, remember?"

Adrien had taught her so many things she hadn't known. Even without the memory loss, she would've still been oblivious to a few of them.

Although she scoffed at her past actions, her priorities and morals different to what they'd been before, he was someone she'd always want to protect.

"I remember now," she started, tapping at her temple. "My life before. It all came back."

His eyes widened. "Really?"

There was nothing but excitement in his voice.

"Yeah." With a small smile, she elaborated, "I'm a fallen angel, like Luka suggested. I wasn't exactly... reborn? I gave up my powers and we—we get punished when that happens. Left defenceless, you know? Being a baby in a strange world, unable to take care of yourself, is a part of that."

The wonder left his expression.

Adrien's lips parted, but no sound escaped him. He stopped petting Plagg, leaving his hand on him instead.

Then, his face softened to be as soft as his voice as he asked, "A part?"

"There's another curse," she said, fiddling with her sleeve. "I don't—I don't know what it is for me. It's something different for everyone that falls, even if... even if you don't regain your powers, the curse is still active. It's permanent."

He frowned. "There's nothing wrong with you."

The laugh that escaped her wasn't sincere. "A lot of people would disagree with you."

"No," he retorted, jostling Plagg as he shifted towards her, not shying away from her gaze. "They don't know you like I do. There is _nothing_ wrong with you."

And if someone like him could accept her for her flaws—someone who genuinely cared for everyone—she couldn't have been that bad.

"I used to care," she admitted, tucking stray hairs behind her ear. "I was—I was a bit of a handful, before. They either laughed at me or thanked me for doing their work for them."

He blinked. "Eh?"

"I had a reputation for—for killing a lot of demons," Marinette confessed, laughing a bit. "I responded to almost all of the calls that came through. I really, really hated them. Demons, I mean."

He tentatively asked, "Past tense?"

She shrugged. "They're not evil."

"No," Adrien agreed, gently taking her hand in his as Plagg made a noise before rolling off of his lap to go and settle down on a pillow instead. "Were you?"

"No," she denied, not offended in the slightest. "There was—there used to be rules, you know? To avoid making too much mess, to clean up after and avoid detection. I was trained to either knock a human out or lock them somewhere to avoid having them see what happened next—it mostly came down to making them be unconscious so I could kill the demon faster."

"You had it down to a technique," he remarked softly.

"I was good at it," Marinette agreed, squeezing his hand lightly. "I was one of the most vocal about caring for humans, if you can believe it."

Adrien snorted. "You?"

She jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow. "Yeah, me."

"Marinette, you pretty much beat up every at our year to find out if they're a demon," he pointed out, shrieking out a laugh when she pushed him back against the bed.

She sat on his stomach, looking down at him with a frown. "I did that out of love."

"Oh, absolutely," he teased, putting his hands on her hips and shifting her weight so he wasn't uncomfortable with her sitting on him. "You're the most caring person I know—you just care about me more than anyone else."

"That's not going to change," Marinette told him, the smile on her lips reaching her eyes. "I care even more now with all the sudden knowledge I've got."

"You're smart now, are you?" Adrien questioned, smiling widely. "Impress me."

"I'm old," she stated with a shrug. "I've been around—well, long before this city, if you want to be specific."

His eyes widened. "I'm into older women?"

"_That's_ what you're taking away from this?"

"I'm trying not to freak out," Adrien admitted. "I thought it was—was a past life, yeah? As in, the kind where you're reincarnated and don't... get it all back? But, apparently, you were a mythical being."

She swallowed. "I am one."

"Right," he agreed, a little dazed as he nodded his head. "You're—you're an angel right now. Yes. That's a thing."

To try and lighten the mood, she admitted, "You weren't too far off the clenching to get wings to appear."

He exclaimed, "You have _wings_?"

She gestured for him to be quiet, tilting her head to where his door was cracked open still. And taking in how their position could be taken wrongly, she rolled off of him, settling down on her back beside him and stared up at his ceiling.

He had glow in the dark stars stuck up there.

It was a nice touch.

"I haven't gotten them out yet," she admitted, closing her eyes. "But they—they won't be the same. They never are after you fall."

"I'm sure they're beautiful," he murmured. "I can't imagine anything about you being ugly—even if they're like, big, black and made out of leather instead of feathers. I'll accept you for your nightmare wings as long as you promise not to scare me with them."

She laughed. "They're not scary."

"That's what you think," Adrien muttered, poking her shoulder. "I'm a huge coward compared to you. If I watch a scary film, I get paranoid when I go to bed and cover my head with my duvet. It's a if I can't see them, they can't see me thing, even though I _know_ no one's in my room. I'm stupid."

"That's what makes you cute," she teased.

Adrien snickered. "Being scared of shadows?"

"It makes me want to protect you," Marinette admitted, turning her head to gaze at him. His hair was messy, his shirt didn't match his pyjama bottoms, and he looked as pretty as ever. "You're just a big doofus, you know? And I love it."

With a laugh, he remarked, "Well, that's one way of flirting with me."

His mother knocked on the door before coming in with drinks for the two of them. As Adrien had warned her, there were a few dishes with different samples of dishes, his mother putting them down and gently asking Marinette to tell her what she thought of them before she left.

They were delicious.

She'd always wondered what it would be like to be invited into a human home, to experience life like they did with their short lifespans, wondering how they made every day feel like it counted.

She'd gotten her answer.

Marinette looked at Adrien with a fond smile as he burned his tongue from not waiting until his drink had cooled down enough.

He was still the highlight of her life down on the surface.

"I thought of you like pets," she admitted, holding the mug with two hands and feeling the warmth against her hands. "I never—I didn't want to spend any more time down here than I had to, but it wasn't like I_ hated_ it. I just—I thought you were all helpless and kind of stupid, you know?"

Adrien hummed. "I mean, we kind of are."

"Yeah," she agreed, smiling as he made a show of blowing into his mug before taking another sip. "But I don't think you're a pet."

"Good, I'm not into pet-play," he remarked.

She blinked.

With a laugh, he said, "That's move on from that."

"...Okay."

As always, Adrien didn't push her for more than she wanted to tell him.

He was considerate even when he was curious.

And so, she quietly told him more about her life; admitting that she'd had a twin sister that smothered her with love and had been her only friend until they'd hit their teenage years. Marinette confessed she was also just as stubborn and awkward as she was now, and that she'd only branched out during training lessons when she'd befriended Luka.

She was top of her class for combat.

Adrien clapped his hands at that.

It felt more like she was recalling a plot of a story she'd read. While she had the vague memories attached, she couldn't recall all of it. They faded like the memories she had while being human; imperfect and fleeting, unable to all be stored in her head forever.

But she remembered the important parts.

"We were left in charge," Marinette admitted, staring down at her drink that had gotten cold by that point. "The archangels were appointed the leaders."

"Archangels?" he questioned.

She made a thoughtful noise. "The strongest ones, I guess? It's kind of like an elected position but not, you know? There's no yearly vote or whatever to choose who's in charge, it's just—those that are worthy. They're recognised by everyone else for their efforts."

Adrien asked, "Were you on it?"

"Yeah," she confessed, tone almost wistful. "I was."

"My girlfriend, the higher-up," he teased, winking at her when she looked up. "If you're trying to show off, it's working."

She snorted. "Fuck off."

Adrien pressed the back of his hand to his forehead. "Oh, I'm swooning now."

She raised her middle finger at him.

It was getting dark.

When Adrien's father popped his head in—after knocking, of course—he looked delighted when Marinette said that she'd join them for dinner.

Adrien looked just as happy.

Suddenly, the experience didn't sound so suffocating any more. It was clear that his parents liked her from their actions, and the recollection she had of the family dinners she'd had with Bridgette in their small home, surrounding by too many candles because of her sister's obsession with the scented ones, made the thought less nauseating of being around such a warm atmosphere.

Adrien seemed fascinated by her sister.

"What was she like?" he questioned, wide-eyed and curious.

"Sweet," was her first response, the smile on her lips utterly genuine and filled with affection. "She—she always put me first. It was always like... she was the older one? Looking after me and making sure that I didn't go hungry because I was too busy training. She always worried when I came down here to help."

His expression was soft. "She sounds nice."

Remembering how Bridgette had looked at her with tears in her eyes, she had to avert her gaze as she replied, "She is."

He gently bumped her shoulder with his. "What happened?"

"I cared," she vaguely responded. "They—she didn't. That's all there is to it."

"There's more," he denied. "But I'm not going to push you to tell me. Just—I know there's got to be more to it for you to leave someone you love."

She snorted. "You say that like I love anyone but you."

"You do," he pointed out, fondness clear in his voice. "Your sister, remember? And you liked Luka to some extent to consider him a friend. That's hard for you—it took you, like, years to refer to Alya and Nino as your friends instead of just mine."

Marinette glared.

He held his hands up in a sign of surrender. "I'm just saying."

She made a show of sighing. "Sometimes, you should just shut up."

"But then you'd miss out on the sound of my voice," he replied with hesitation, going as far as to bat his eyelashes. "That would be a shame."

"I think you're a bit stuck up," she retorted.

He grinned. "Stuck up on you."

"That doesn't work!"

-x-

She didn't see Bridgette again.

Marinette wasn't oblivious to the eyes that were on her when she was alone. She could tell that there was an angel nearby, and from how they weren't approaching her, she had to assume it was either Bridgette staying back and observing her in the early hours of the morning, or Luka being curious about why she hadn't gone to see him.

As much as she wanted to distance herself from that life, it wasn't an option.

But she was stubborn.

She wasn't going to apologise for what she said. Bridgette needed to understand that things couldn't be the same as they were before—that she wouldn't be.

And so, she ignored the tell-tale feeling of an angel close to her when she was alone. It tended to be when she left her motel room or was coming back to it, not intruding on the rest of her life, and not involving Adrien in it.

To be safe, they agreed that he'd never come to the room she was renting.

If there was one thing she shared with her sister, it was being stubborn.

She didn't see her again for three months.

In that time, Marinette became accustomed with her body. She knew the extent of her powers, vaguely recalled her training and how she used to twist her body and use walls to vault off of, demonstrating an almost gymnast-like quality to her fighting that she'd lacked before.

She didn't need the bandalore to pull off moves that any human couldn't.

Adrien made of point of being there to see her showing off—joking that he should've invested in pompoms to truly be her cheerleader—and he was always so excited whenever she pulled off something as simple as a flip, the things that he wasn't athletic enough to do.

She wasn't strong, but she wasn't breakable.

Therefore, she could crash into her surroundings and push her limits without injuring herself.

Adrien asked her whether she'd considered studying a martial art to expand her knowledge.

Marinette had to shyly admit that she'd studied some before, but she'd forgotten most of the techniques from lack of use.

She was rusty.

He was lazy and didn't like to get out of bed unless it benefited him.

They were really good together.

Adrien had a lot of questions.

He started off with the funny ones, those without baggage and didn't probe into her relationship with her sister.

"Angels eat, right?"

She'd stared at him until he shrugged.

Eventually, she broke the silence to say, "I am an angel."

"Yeah, but you could be the exception," Adrien remarked, thoughtfully tapping his chin. "You know, the special outcast that all the guys want? And the girls, too, of course. You're equally attractive to everyone because you're so different."

She pushed him over.

When it came time for her to make the decision whether to bleach and dye her hair again, she agreed without having to think about it. While she still didn't put much care into her appearance, she liked the distinction it gave her from her sister—for more than the different lengths of their hair and the clear result of malnutrition from how she'd grown up alone without her sister being there for her that time.

They'd never be the same height again.

"It's rare," Marinette admitted, carefully holding her hands out with her fingers spread for Adrien to attempt to paint her nails. "Up there it's—there's everything you could want, really. Sure, there's arguments and people are petty but... it's kind at the same time. There's rarely murder and there's no need for crime when there's not, like, a class system that sets everyone apart."

Adrien hummed. "Everyone's equal?"

"I guess, yeah," she answered, making a thoughtful noise. "Archangels are the highest, of course, but no one kissed my ass."

He puckered his lips. "I'll gladly kiss your ass."

"You're gross," she accused, nothing but affection in her voice. "I never—I wasn't interested in dating, back then."

"You're my first, too," Adrien admitted, his smile reaching his eyes as he shyly paid attention to her nails. "Well, unless you count the guy I kissed when I was, like, five."

She snorted.

"It was very passionate," he joked.

She muttered, "You're lucky you're cute."

"Oh, I'm the cutest," Adrien said, laughing. "That's why you're still around, isn't it?"

With a curious tilt of her head, she replied, "Where else would I go?"

"Up?" he suggested, emphasising that by pointing to his ceiling with the hand holding the brush for the polish, almost causing a blob of it to fall off. "You're one of them, right? You're an archangel. You—it's part of you to belong there, isn't it?"

She swallowed. "That's who I was."

"You're an angel again," Adrien whispered. "That means you—you have a duty or something, right?"

"No, not really," she denied, shifting her legs to be more comfortable. "They don't—there's no enforced rules or anything, not any more. A lot of them just... stopped caring? They only wanted to restrict how strong demons could get, so there wouldn't be an uprising or something. And, clearly from all the shit Chlóé's been told, they're still scared of that."

It was the first time she'd said her friend's name.

And from the way Adrien's hand stilled, hovering with the brush but not moving it on her nail, it was clear that he'd picked up on that.

She hadn't gotten any messages from her.

Marinette was scared to visit her home to see if she was still there.

That part of the city was one that she'd avoided ever since.

He quietly asked, "Is that why they kill others like me?"

"Yeah," she confirmed, ever-so-quietly. "It's not—it's not to stop you getting into Heaven or anything. No one gets in any more."

He breathed out audibly. "They don't?"

"Well, not when I was up there," she answered, watching as he started to slowly paint her nail again. It was uneven and sloppy, polish getting onto her skin surrounding it. "It just—it seemed stupid, really. To open our home to unknowns and have them come in and parade around, boasting about their accomplishments—"

"No one got in?" he questioned. "Not even if I... did something really good like kill a demon? That sounds like it would earn me some good points."

She snorted. "No, not even then."

"But... Hell isn't a thing."

"Not any more, no," Marinette said, closing her eyes as his thumb traced a faint pattern into her skin. "There's—there's another place? I think it's referred to as—"

"Purgatory?" he suggested.

"Yes." She sighed. "That one. That's—everyone gets into there, no matter what you've done with your life."

His question surprised her. "Will you?"

It took a moment for her to answer. "I... don't know."

"It might be cruel for me to say, but... I'd like to see you there, if you do," Adrien confessed in a whisper. "An afterlife with you would be worth it, I think."

She swallowed. "It's not a nice place."

He gave her a shy smile. "It'll be nicer with you there."

And in that moment, she was reminded of why she wanted to protect him so.

She wondered if that was how Bridgette felt for her.

They'd been close. Marinette had preferred to spend time with her sister rather than anyone else, anti-social as she still was, but it hadn't been because she didn't care about others. She'd would've rather spent all her time with her favourite person—that spread along to include Luka along the way—rather than the others, but she didn't hate them.

She used to care.

For their birthdays for the first few decades, she used to pass out baked goods to everyone else to celebrate.

That was a strange thought.

Heaven meant that flowers and fruit were in season all year. The sun was present but it wasn't sweltering and horrible; rather, the weather was warm enough to be pleasant, not enough to cause her to sweat uncomfortably, and it was cool enough to wear a sweater if she wanted to.

It wasn't like the finicky weather on Earth.

She'd used to care.

Although she wasn't close, she gave out birthday presents and cards when they were young, pleased whenever she'd gotten a smile in return. She'd always greeted anyone that said hello, exchanged pleasantries, and the difference between the two versions of her was almost jarring.

But it was still there, kind of.

It was all aimed at Adrien.

Valentine's came with her waiting on his doorstep with a bouquet of flowers.

His parents had taken pictures of him fumbling and taking them inside, knocking them into the wall and causing pollen and petals to fall to the floor. He'd been flustered and bright red, stuttering out his words when he asked his father whether they had a spare vase to display them somewhere.

When she came over in the evening, the vase was on his desk.

Plagg kept trying to eat the flowers.

She stayed until the late hours of the evening, gently nudging Plagg off of her and untangling her legs from Adrien's from where he'd fallen asleep in bed beside her. Instead of waking her up, she pressed a kiss to his forehead before doing the same to Plagg, almost laughing as he gave her a disgruntled look.

It was strange to think she'd used to think of humans like she did Plagg.

He was better.

She slipped out the window, gently closing it as best as she could before jumping down from the small roof without any pain.

That was a plus.

She could jump off the roof from a second-story building without pain.

With her hat keeping her hair down and in place as she used the bandalore to get to her motel—a short trip that would be close to twenty minutes if she walked—she slowed down and stashed her weapon away when her sense tingled.

It was easy to spot Bridgette.

She was wearing a sweater that time, but she still wasn't dressed for the middle of February.

Marinette stared at her, tilting her head in a silent question.

Bridgette hesitated before crossing the street.

She stayed there on the curb, putting her hands in her pockets for warmth, able to see her breath in the air as she breathed out evenly, and waited until Bridgette was standing in front of her until asking, "Are you here to argue with me again?"

Bridgette frowned. "No."

"I thought you'd given up on me," she murmured.

"I know you noticed me here," Bridgette responded, looking a little bashful as she fiddled with the ends of her hair, curling it around her finger. "I—I wanted to see whether you'd talk to me, if you knew I was here. But you didn't."

She shrugged. "I'm stubborn."

"You are," Bridgette agreed, crossing her arms and rubbing her hands against the material of her sweater, clearly searching for warmth. "I see you're still annoying."

"And you're not prepared for the weather," she remarked.

Bridgette huffed. "It's not my fault it's so cold down here."

"It's winter."

"Snow is weird," Bridgette said, wrinkling her nose as she eyed the ice that was along the edges of the road, barely-there since most of it had melted from all the cars. "I don't know how you can put up with it. Wouldn't you prefer to be somewhere else?"

She bluntly replied, "I'm happy here."

Bridgette gave her a flat look. "Yeah, that's why you look malnourished."

"Give me a break, I was homeless," Marinette snapped back, defensive. "I couldn't exactly live the life of luxury when I shouldn't even exist here."

"You chose that."

She didn't hesitate to say, "I'd choose it again."

Bridgette's voice didn't reveal her emotions as she stated, "Because of that boy you were with."

"Yes," she confirmed, slipping off her gloves and offering them out to her. "I'd choose him over anyone without hesitation. Make sure that detail makes it back up there, yeah? If anyone hurts him, I'll kill them."

Putting the gloves on with awkward movements that showed she wasn't used to doing it, Bridgette asked, "You'd kill us?"

"Yes."

"And how are you planning to do that?" Bridgette asked, brow furrowed. "That's not—we can't hurt each other. Unless you mean, like, figuratively, and you're just trying to sound scary."

The swords she had were considered a myth—to demons and angels alike. It wasn't a secret that she was going to reveal freely, not when it was the only thing that could hurt another of her kind.

"Your bandalore wouldn't do anything to us either," Bridgette said, pointing to the pocket where it had been stashed away. "That's angel-made. You can't strangle me with it or, I don't know, snap my ankle?"

Marinette snorted. "You talk a lot."

"You used to," was the soft reply she got to that.

Marinette looked away. "I used to do a lot of things."

"You used to be happy," Bridgette said, stepping forward until their shoes were touching, visible breath in the air touching her skin and making it obvious she'd brushed her teeth before coming down. "But when I look at you now, you just—you look so sad, Marinette."

"Have you considered," she started slowly, looking up and taking in the freckles on her sister's face that differed ever-so-slightly to her own, "that I'm sad because you're here?"

Bridgette swallowed. "You love me."

"I do," she agreed, that feeling of affection being present for someone else. "But I love someone else, too."

With her facial features scrunched in distaste, Bridgette asked, "That boy?"

"Adrien," she supplied, a smile curling on her lips. "I do, yes."

It came out in a whisper, disbelief clear in her voice. "You're... in love with a human."

"I'd do anything for him," Marinette stated, not shying away from her sister's gaze. "I have. He's the reason for—for all the good I've had in this life. And why I'm here with you, right now."

Bridgette's expression was pinched. "He's pure."

"He is," she agreed, not surprised that that detail had been noticed. "And yet, you didn't kill him."

"No."

"Why?" Marinette questioned, reaching out and touching her cold hand to her sister's face, cupping her cheek in a way that wasn't the loving touch she had with Adrien. "You've done it before, haven't you?"

Bridgette leaned into her touch, eyebrows furrowed as she looked at her sadly. "I don't want to upset you."

"You upset me before," she bluntly replied, a lack of emotion in her voice. "You—you didn't care about my opinions about not hurting them. You just wanted to make the demons suffer and be done with it."

Bridgette quietly said, "I didn't think you cared _that_ much."

"I told you I did," she insisted. "I _cried_ and asked you not to be so selfish."

"You cry when you get angry," was the evasive response to that.

She dropped her hand, the laugh escaping her not entirely sincere. "Want to know something funny, Bridgette?"

Her sister eyed her warily.

"My best friend was a demon," she announced with a smile that didn't reach her eyes. "I almost considered her family—with how alone I was, she was the closest thing. She taught me so much, and do you know what happened in the end?"

Bridgette pursed her lips.

She breathed out audibly. "I killed her."

"You've killed demons before," Bridgette pointed out. "That's not anything new."

"She died for me, before," she replied. "When I was human. A demon shoved me aside and _died_ for me. That's not something we're taught, are we?"

"What are you trying to convince me of right now?" Bridgette asked, confusion clear in her voice. "Because I know you aren't about to start campaigning for demon rights or whatever. They're not—they're scum, Marinette. You know that."

"Yeah," she agreed, pulling her sleeves over her hands. "But we're all scum—even our kind. There's good and bad ones."

"And you... befriended one." Bridgette's tone was dubious. "Am I supposed to believe that?"

"If you want." She shrugged. "I learned things I never would've otherwise. There's a remaining blacksmith that lives in the city, though they charge a hefty sum for their services."

Bridgette frowned. "There is?"

She hummed. "Yes. And I know how to get their information—I can't say whether they'll actually answer me when believing I'm human, however."

The disdain in Bridgette's voice was audible. "You were really friends with one of _them_?"

"Best friends." Her smile showed her teeth. "It was fun. We enjoyed hunting together."

"Luka said you were a hunter," Bridgette murmured. "I didn't want to believe you'd stooped that low, but—but there's no other way that you'd be able to get your powers back, is there?"

"A hunter took me in briefly when I was younger," Marinette replied, patting her pocket where the bandalore was resting. "That's where I got this. It's been fucking useful."

Bridgette scrunched her face up. "You swear a lot now."

"It's fun."

"It's rude," was the snappy response she got to that. "It makes you sound like common trash."

"I might as well be that now," she mused. "I'm homeless and an orphan, am I not? It's fitting."

Bridgette bristled. "I'm your family."

"Not on the surface, you're not," Marinette bluntly denied, shooting her a disapproving look. "You're an intruder that can't even dress properly for this shitty weather."

"I'm only here to see _you_."

"And I'm telling you I'm not going back," she retorted.

The best way to describe Bridgette's expression was crushed. "But Marinette—"

"I don't want to," she interrupted.

"I'm up there!"

She sighed. "And I'm down here, where I want to be."

"You can't possibly mean that," Bridgette said, gesturing wildly to the litter that was on the street, the car that drove past with a speed that was over the limit, and the dirty surroundings around the motel. "Look at this place! It's—it's _disgusting_ here. There's demons and humans are just so gross—"

"It's my decision!" Marinette shouted, the festering anger coming out in her voice. It was there, curling in her chest and causing her heart to beat faster as she realised that she _resented_ how distant her sister had been, and the fact that she was swooping in and trying to convince her that she was wrong only made it worse. "It's not your choice, Bridgette!"

"Why?" Bridgette asked—pleaded—sounding seconds away from crying. "Why would you want to be here over—over safety? Being with me—with us again?"

Her throat felt tight.

"I just want to be happy," she confessed in a whisper, hands balled into fists around her sleeves. "It—it has nothing to do with you any more."

Bridgette wasn't accepting that answer. "It has everything to do with me."

"Because you're my sister?" she muttered, bitter.

"Because I _love_ you!" Bridgette yelled, roughly rubbing her face with her hand, causing the tears to spill out of her eyes. "You're—without you, I'm so alone. I miss you every single day, and—and knowing that you've been down here suffering makes me want to cry until I can't any more. You deserve to be happy, not wallowing down here in misery!"

Marinette bristled. "I want to be here."

With her voice quivering from crying, Bridgette announced, "I'm not leaving until I change your mind."

As it turned out, she really meant that.

The motel room was small as it was with the double bed taking up most of the space, so having the two of them staying in the room made it seem even smaller.

Bridgette stubbornly sat on the bed, serious with her decision to stay.

It wasn't all bad.

Marinette offered the clothes she had in her bag still, pointing out she didn't have any spare shoes because Bridgette never returned them after she'd stormed off, and her sister's face coloured at that.

It was clear that Bridgette was trying to understand why she was staying.

Bridgette wasn't impressed with the cheap dinner that Marinette had bought at a nearby convenience store, one that she couldn't heat up because she didn't have a microwave in the room. She'd offered to get instant noodles to use the kettle provided, but Bridgette had turned her nose up at that, not wanting to experience so mediocre compared to the dishes she was used to eating.

There was a clear difference in their living arrangements.

The years of harshness and cold winters had lowered Marinette's standards. Even with the memories of pristine clothes scented with lovely-smelling laundry detergent and the wonderful meals that were provided daily for free of charge, it had been so long since she'd experienced them that they seemed out of reach and not real.

Bridgette was spoiled compared to her.

"You eat this?" Bridgette grumbled, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. "It's—it's cold and gross. Why would you?"

She shrugged. "I was hungry and didn't want to wait for takeaway to be delivered. And I wasn't going to make you sit in this room for, like, an hour while I go out and get food for us."

Bridgette frowned, staring down at the sauce in her container that was almost solid from how it had congealed. "We could've gone somewhere. Shown me the sights, you know? That's a touristy thing we could've done."

"You've been here before," she pointed out.

"I never really cared that much," Bridgette retorted, using her plastic fork to push the food around and making it look even more unappetising. "I came down to see some art galleries, sure, but I didn't stop to eat anything here. I didn't want to."

Dubious, she asked, "And now you do?"

"Well, not really," Bridgette admitted, not embarrassed at all. "But I want to understand why you'd want to stay. All I'm seeing right now is sadness and a dingy room that I'm pretty sure isn't cleaned properly."

"Someone comes in to clean it every two days."

Bridgette muttered, "It sure doesn't seem it."

The complaints started back up when Bridgette used her shower, absolutely disgusted with the quality of shampoo and conditioner, the two large bottles that Marinette had bought on discount along with a cheap shower gel when she couldn't be bothered to splurge just to smell nice.

Then, the small television provided wasn't good.

Marinette opened up her shitty laptop to show her sister some stupid videos that Adrien had sent previously, ones that she'd liked and opened up when she wanted to be amused, and that brought up the remark that the free internet for the guests was awful and took minutes to load.

"It's as bad as the nineties!" Bridgette exclaimed, dramatically falling back against the mattress. "You can't seriously like this."

"I wasn't living here before," she replied to that, shutting the laptop closed and giving up on that idea. "This is just—it's a time being thing. It beats being out on the street, and I'm not going to blow more money on a better place when I'm barely here."

Bridgette sighed. "Where are you getting your money from? You're—you're counted a kid, right? And I haven't seen you in any work uniform."

"I'm seventeen," she said, gesturing to her body. "And I'm pretty stunted from being malnourished, so I doubt anyone's going to hire me any time soon. I don't have to get a job right now, it's fine."

With her eyes narrowed, Bridgette pressed, "Where do you get your money?"

She grinned. "I steal it."

Gasping, Bridgette sat upright, outraged, "_Marinette_!"

"Please, like that's the worst fucking thing I've done." She scoffed. "It's nothing, Bri."

Her sister wasn't having that. "You hate stealing!"

"I used to," Marinette corrected, raising her eyebrows as she tapped her head meaningfully. "It's a lesser evil down here. What? Would you prefer I got into child labour instead? I have to get money somehow."

"I can't believe this," Bridgette whispered, wide-eyed and in disbelief. "You—you were always so against it! You said me borrowing a hat was stealing if I didn't ask first."

She snorted. "Technically, it is."

"You're not borrowing money!"

"Of course not," she agreed. "I have no intention of returning it."

That made Bridgette gape more.

"Look," she said with a sigh. "I'm everything I would've hated and that's _fine_. People change all the time."

Bridgette asked quietly, "You're really trying to justify falling and becoming a terrible person?"

"I'm not lying about it," Marinette bluntly replied. "I barely give a shit about anyone any more."

Bridgette looked pained at that.

-x-

The first two days, Bridgette refused to leave the room.

It snowed outside.

And for the first time, Marinette called in sick to school.

Thankfully, Adrien was on board with that plan. He'd barely taken any time off since they'd started their new school, so he was more than excited to pretend to be sick and spend his days in bed to help her out.

He said over text that it was for the greater good.

Adrien knew that her sister was staying with her and kept asking how she was, but as soon as his parents found out that she was sick, lying that it was the same thing that he had—going as far as to get Adrien to call her when she didn't turn up on his doorstep for the ride in the morning—they kept pestering him for her address to try and deliver food and medicine to make her feel better.

She was glad Chloé didn't kill them.

His parents were growing on her.

The surface wasn't have the same effect on Bridgette.

She absolutely hated the snow and the ice that was covering the car windows that she could see when she looked out the doorway, and she was very vocal about that.

Marinette pointed out that they couldn't go outside without her wearing the proper clothing.

It took a day for her to be convinced to go back up and get Marinette's trainers to wear for protection against the cold.

The trip was short. Bridgette was there one moment, vanished the next while Marinette tied her hair up into a ponytail that she couldn't quite get as high as she used to since her hair was still growing out. It was down to her collarbones at that point, nicely cut from where Adrien's mother had trimmed it for her the last time it had been bleached and toned.

She didn't hate it.

Bridgette reappeared with the trainers on her feet.

Marinette gave her a thumbs up.

Of all the clothes she owned, the warmest turned out to be a pair of jeans that only had a few rips from wear and tear—not because they'd come like that, for once—and a shirt underneath a sweater that was thicker than the one that Bridgette had appeared in. Marinette gave her her gloves without hesitation, knowing that her sister wasn't used to the cold like her.

"If you see a demon, you're not going to attack them," Marinette started, not leaving room for discussion. "They're just living. I'm not in the mood to try and get the blood off of our clothing any time soon, yeah?"

Bridgette frowned. "I thought you were some tough hunter."

She snorted. "I'm on a break."

The reply to that was doubtful. "Right, sure."

It was like leading around a child.

For all the times Bridgette had been on the surface, she'd never stuck around and lived like a human for a while. It had always been about answering the call, fighting the demon or slaughtering the human that was in the way, and sometimes coming down to indulge in hobbies and seeing what the world had to offer before returning back to their home.

Marinette had been one of the worst for only coming down for her duties.

Before she'd fallen, she'd never sat down and had a meal.

So, she planned to remedy that for her sister.

She didn't stray to the other side of the city.

They ended up at a café.

Marinette decided that sweet things were the best way to her sister what she was missing. Ushering Bridgette to choose a table for them to sit down, she ordered the most extravagant hot drinks, splurging more than she usually would've when it wasn't a special occasion, and picked out two baked goods for them to share.

She intentionally got one that Adrien had been wanting to try.

Bridgette looked horribly out of place, sat on a cushioned chair, fiddling with her gloves and eyeing the occupants of the table beside her in suspicion.

"There's a table over there," Marinette said, gesturing with her head. "It'll be quieter, come on."

Bridgette didn't try to argue that.

It almost felt normal.

She didn't feel awkward or out of place with her, but that didn't mean that she was completely happy. It was like reminiscing a fond memory before realising that it was in the past, that it wouldn't happen again in the near future.

"I mostly came out with my demon friend," she said, stirring her drink and watching as the cream steadily melted from the steam. "It was safer than bringing Adrien out in the open, you know? And Chloé hated cooking so we bought food elsewhere daily."

"Chloé," Bridgette repeated. "That's her name?"

She swallowed the lump in her throat. "Yeah."

It was mortifying to realise that she _wanted_ to tell Bridgette about her; to talk about her feelings in an intimate setting like they'd always used to.

That had been reserved for Adrien only.

So, instead of elaborating further, she clammed up, not saying anything else.

Bridgette wasn't getting the hint. "Did she really save your life?"

There was also the chance that she did know, and that she was pushing to try and understand her. Marinette had never kept quiet about her problems before; she'd been open, open to sobbing about what was bothering her, even if it was the petty and immature.

"Yes," Marinette confirmed, not looking up from her drink. "Accidentally summoned a lava demon in the process, too. My luck hasn't changed."

Bridgette's curiosity was clear in her voice. "No, _really_?"

"I never want to see one again," she said with a grimace. "It was like—you couldn't feel the heat, right? But it burnt anything it came into contact with. It's fucking awful."

"I've still never seen one." Bridgette whistled. "I'd say you're lucky, but that sounds scary. I would've just—gone back up and escaped."

Marinette had never been able to whistle.

"I threw a really strong demon into it." She snickered. "He's still the strongest I've come across, I think."

"Do you have any pictures?" Bridgette abruptly asked. "Of you as a child? I want to—I'd like to see the differences and put another one with our collection. You deserve to be up there."

"I've got one back in my room," she said, smile curling on her lips. "With Adrien when we first met. He found me hiding in the woods and wanted to be my friend. I'm pretty sure you would've fainted if you ever saw how dirty I was back then."

Bridgette snorted. "You're dirty now."

"Cheap soap doesn't mean I'm dirty," she retorted. "You're just stuck up."

"I'm buying you better things."

"Oh, and how are you going to afford that?" Marinette replied, pointing her spoon at her. "You have no currency of any kind, idiot."

"I'll—"

"Steal?" she supplied, raising her eyebrows. "That's beneath your holier-than-thou attitude, isn't it?"

Bridgette gasped. "That was _your_ attitude!"

She haughtily raised her chin. "You've got no proof."

"I absolutely _do—_"

It felt natural to laugh with her.

Marinette laughed with her shoulders shaking, putting a hand over her mouth as her whole body moved, laughter coming out more and more as Bridgette was in the same giggly position, and they were only encouraging each other more. The noises came out as wheezes, lungs started to protest, and she felt tears started to collect in her eyes.

She cared about her.

That hadn't changed, and yet, sitting beside her and feeling the affection and warmth in her chest as she made her sister laugh and practically cackle at a stupid thing she said—

She'd missed her.

That realisation was more horrifying than comforting.

Her human life had become centred around one person, someone she considered family and had somehow been accepted into his despite how closed off she was, and yet—

When she was faced with her actual sister, she didn't feel guilty.

Finding something she was passionate about was what Bridgette had always wanted for her; she'd always wished that Marinette would put aside the bloodshed and murder to focus her energy on something more rewarding and fulfilling than looking after humans that would never give her so much as a thank you for her work.

It just so happened that she was passionate about _someone_.

"I suppose this isn't so bad," Bridgette muttered, already reaching for another forkful of cake to eat. "I don't see why you'd stick around if this is all that's good, though."

She laughed. "The only good thing I know of is Adrien."

"Okay, gross." Bridgette pulled a face. "I'm trying to eat here. Fawn over your human later, yeah?"

"He's not _my_ human," she retorted, reciting something that Alya had always been passionate about. "You can't belong to anyone—you're your own person."

Bridgette raised her eyebrows. "Oh, really?"

Without feeling embarrassed, she confirmed with a nod, "Yes."

"If you say so, Marinette," was the response to that.

There was no uncomfortable feeling in her stomach by the time they'd finished their drinks, talking about anything and everything—other than the mention of Chloé. Bridgette was interested in how she'd grown up, horrified and upset by the blunt mentions of the poverty of those living on the streets, and when Marinette mentioned how she'd been taking by Adrien's hunter grandfather, she became intrigued.

She bought another round of drinks.

Bridgette wasn't impressed with the public bathroom.

She didn't like how Marinette had fake papers forged for her.

"Yeah, I don't have them any more," she admitted with a smile. "I left 'em behind at a hunter's house."

Bridgette put her face in her hands and groaned at that.

Sometimes, it was the humans that they'd saved that had gone on to become hunters. If they weren't knocked out or locked away to stay away from the action, some had thought it would be funny to see what would happen if they told the truth; to see whether their mental state would suffer because of it, or if they'd strive to do something different with their life with the knowledge.

Marinette wondered whether she'd been the cause of any.

Then again, she'd never spoken with the human she'd saved before. She answered the call and focused on the demon after knocking them aside, not sticking around to comfort them.

She'd comforted Adrien more times than she could count, and he'd done the same to her.

With her new outlook, she thought that, maybe, she hadn't really cared that much about them. She'd still been righteous and wanted to be _good—_to avoid stealing and stick to being kind, aiming to only cause happy smiles wherever she went.

It made her feel nauseated.

She wouldn't knock Plagg to the side or render him unconscious.

Then again, that was because she knew that Adrien adored him. And if she hurt Plagg, it would hurt him.

And yet, she didn't force herself to pet Plagg when she came over. She enjoyed the soft feeling of his fur, felt special when he purred and rubbed his head against her hand, and—

She liked that little cat that had replaced her.

More so than how she'd viewed humans in the past.

She just hadn't wanted them to suffer needlessly, not when all the effort they put into their lives amounted to null in the end; that the trying and the waiting for karma to repay them resulted in _nothing_.

She'd felt sorry for them.

And now—now that she'd lived through it, and felt worthless and without a cause until she'd stumbled onto power in the form of weapons hidden underneath the bed of a deceased man, she cared even less.

One lifetime was enough.

-x-

There was someone knocking on the her room's door.

Bridgette was beside her, bundled in the duvet and still complaining that it was cold. And as her sister flinched at the noise, turning around quickly and staring at the door with wide eyes, Marinette put a hand on her shoulder in an action to convey that she didn't need to do anything.

The room was still paid for, and she'd asked for the cleaners not to come by that day.

She got up, sock-clad feet touching the carpet and cracked the door open enough to see who was on the other side.

Then, she promptly slammed it shut.

"_Marinette_!" Alya wailed, banging on the door with her fist, encouraged by knowing that she was there. "Come on, you've been ignoring me for weeks—no, _months_! I know you're sick and I'm worried because that's not—you don't get sick!"

And as she looked back at the bed, Bridgette was bewildered. "Who is that?"

"Fucking open up!" Alya shouted, still knocking loudly. "I'll stay here screaming until security comes, don't even try me. Does this place even _have_ security?"

"A friend?" It came out sounding like a question. "She shouldn't be here."

It wasn't her who opened the door.

Instead, Bridgette crossed the room and swung the door open—not a crack to peek like Marinette had done—and blankly stared at Alya.

Alya's expression was bewildered as she said, "You're not Marinette."

Marinette sighed. "I'm here."

And as Alya's gaze turned to her, the first thing she said was, "You don't look sick."

"I'm not," she admitted, gesturing with her head to Bridgette beside her. "But I can't exactly go to school when I've got an unwanted guest that doesn't want to leave."

Bridgette snorted. "Excuse you."

"I—what?" Alya stuttered out, standing awkwardly in the doorway, unsure on whether to step inside or not with a plastic bag hanging from her hand.

"How did you get this address?" Marinette questioned. "Adrien's supposed to keep it a secret."

"Yeah, about that..." Alya trailed off, pushing her spectacles up with her index finger. "He had it written down in his notes. The room number and all. I'm glad his memory is so shit because he hasn't changed his passcode since he got that phone."

She sighed. "You're supposed to be at school."

"I was worried when both you and Adrien ended up sick!" Alya exclaimed, thrusting the bag out for Marinette to take ahold of. "That's—you _never_ get sick. I had reason to be worried, okay? But it turns out you're just camping out in this... shithole and ignoring me."

"You keep where you're staying a secret from your friends?" Bridgette questioned, making her presence known. "That's not nice."

Marinette scowled. "Oh, fuck off."

Alya squinted. "Who are you?"

All Bridgette had to say to that was, "Can't you tell?"

"I—" Alya shifted, still hovering awkward in the doorway. "I didn't want to be racist and say that you look alike. I've definitely never heard Marinette talk about—you before."

With a sigh, Marinette announced, "This is my—she's family. Her name's Bridgette."

Alya's lips parted, but no sound escaped as she kept looking wide-eyed between the two.

"Now isn't a good time," she continued, shuffling forward and holding onto the door, making her intent clear. "Just—go see Adrien, yeah? He'll tell you."

And with that, she shut the door.

Bridgette laughed. "Are you trying to keep me a secret?"

"Not really, no," she denied, pushing her hair away from her face. "Adrien knows. Alya shouldn't have—she shouldn't know where I'm staying. I didn't want you to meet any of them like this."

Bridgette tilted her head. "Why?"

"Because I like them," Marinette admitted. "They're—they've been nice to me."

Dubious, Bridgette remarked, "She said you've been ignoring her."

She huffed. "Why do you _care_?"

"Because I care about you," Bridgette replied, sitting down on the edge of the bed, still looking out of place and scruffy in the oversized clothes she'd been given. "I want to know what I'm missing out on, remember? If that includes your human friends, that's fine. I'm... surprised that you have any that care enough to come visit because you're supposedly ill."

Opening the plastic bag, she peered in to see a sugary drink, snacks, a pack of tissues, and medicine that was specifically meant for a sore throat. Adrien hadn't told her exactly what lie he'd been going with when claiming they were both ill with the same thing.

"Yeah," she murmured, staring at the items that Alya must've specifically bought for her. "They're... nice."

"Nice," Bridgette repeated.

An hour later, she got multiple messages from Adrien, apologising and saying that he was going to change his passcode immediately so Alya wouldn't snoop any more. He said that he hoped that she didn't cause too much trouble, asking her whether she was okay, and extending the concern to Bridgette and asking whether she'd been confused by Alya's sudden appearance.

Of course he cared about her sister without never meeting her.

"You're texting a lot," Bridgette said, only talking after she'd finished her mouthful. Her manners weren't atrocious like Alya's. "Still that guy? Adrien?"

"He's asking about you," she replied, tapping away at the screen. "Wants to know if you're okay because he's an idiot."

Bridgette made a disapproving noise. "Don't insult your friends."

"We're not friends, we're dating," Marinette corrected. "And he knows he's an idiot. It's, like, one of my favourite things about him."

Her sister didn't sound convinced. "That doesn't sound good at all."

She shook her head. "I'm not letting you see his idiocy in person until you're not sulking any more."

"I'm not _sulking_!"

As much as she trusted that Bridgette was being serious about not harming him—when she could've hurt him in the past few months while they were ignoring each other—that didn't mean that she wasn't nervous about the two parts of her life meeting. There was a line drawn between them, the two knowing different sides of her that she'd had trouble acknowledging in the first place.

Bridgette was vocal about the differences.

While Adrien—he didn't mention them, surely because he knew that it would make her uncomfortable.

It wasn't like she'd changed a lot.

Her stubbornness of not wanting to talk to Alya or Nino while she felt so low was still the same, though her hand had been forced there.

Alya wasn't so placated with a few text messages that barely counted as replies.

For a moment, Marinette had trouble remembering how much they'd told the other two—whether her past life had been brought up.

Awkwardly, Adrien didn't know either.

So, she sent a message to him saying that he could tell them whatever he wanted, as long as they didn't bother her while she was with Bridgette.

The only text she got from Alya the next day was her saying that she wasn't going to come by unannounced again.

Marinette replied that she shouldn't again.

Alya responded with an angry emoji.

Sometimes, bickering with Bridgette made her feel like nostalgic. For a while, it was like there wasn't a divide between them, or that their differences had literally made Marinette decide to leave without saying good-bye to anyone since she thought someone would've talked her out of it without them realising what she was really trying to do.

For all the reasons she fell, it wasn't because she hated her sister.

"Luka wants to see you," Bridgette told her, folding her napkin into a complicated pattern that they'd both learned when they were young and bored.

They'd upgraded to a restaurant instead of a diner. Bridgette had looked at the poor condition the seats were in before turning her nose up at them. And since she'd done so well blending in—in oversized clothes that didn't fit and without drawing attention from how out of place she must've felt—Marinette decided to splurge and treat her for a meal.

It was Thursday.

Adrien had managed to keep up the lie of being ill for so long. The only reason it was working was because he'd never had much time off before, turning up at school with headaches and a runny nose that meant he had to keep getting out tissues while a teacher was trying to talk.

Yet, it seemed with his age, they trusted him more when he said he was too ill to go to school.

It helped that he worked on his projects at home, sending her updates and making it easy for her to adapt his answers to her own when she had the time. But with Bridgette with her, she'd barely had time for any of that.

As fun as it was, it wasn't optimal.

Bridgette wasn't going to see all that she was missing in a week and they both knew that.

She frowned, stirring her drink and watching the ice cubes clink against the glass. "I'm not going back up there."

"He's too sad to come down here."

"Sad?" Marinette squinted. "What?"

"Emo?" Bridgette corrected, tilting her head. "Was that the word? You know, like, too angsty to actually come see you himself again. He was pretty upset when he found you before."

While he hadn't seemed that emotional in Chloé's home, not when her memories hadn't been there, looking back on that moment with all the things she knew about him painted a different story.

Luka was quiet, kept to himself, and didn't like others to know that he was upset.

"Look," Bridgette started, flattening the napkin with her hand and ruining her handiwork. "I know you can't drop all your human life to spend time with me forever. I just—I want to know that I'm not going to lose you again."

"I'll be here," Marinette pointed out. "You can always come and visit me."

Bridgette huffed. "You can visit _me_."

"And face a load of people asking how I've been?" She scrunched her face up in distaste. "I hate small talk, even more now than before. I'd probably be more likely to tell them to piss off and stomp away."

"I admit some might be... put off from your sudden attitude change," Bridgette said, gesturing towards her with a grimace. "But you're still _you_. You're one of us and you belong up there, no matter how much you want to deny that. You have a home."

She muttered, "I have a home here."

"You live in a dump," Bridgette snapped. "A filthy one."

But that wasn't right, was it?

"With Adrien," Marinette said, not shying away from her sister's gaze. "I'm accepted there. His parents—they like me, somehow. Adrien's asked them if we can live together next year."

Bridgette frowned. "Next year?"

"A school thing," she explained with a wave of her hand. "Forget it. It doesn't matter."

With a frustrated sigh, Bridgette rubbed her hand over her face, pushing aside the the stray hairs and making her look even more of a mess. "What matters is that I want you in my life!"

"I'm not going anywhere," she murmured, awkwardly looking down into her drink that was too cold to hold onto. The choice not to get a hot one was catching up to her. "I'm here, okay? You can just—get a phone and text me or something, when you want to come visit."

"Oh, so you'll make time for me?" Bridgette petulantly replied. "How blessed I am. You must really care about me."

"That's why I'm here with you right now, is it not?" she retorted, shooting her a glare. "If I didn't give a shit about you, I wouldn't have let you stay."

Bridgette bristled. "I'm your sister."

"Family doesn't have to love each other," she pointed out, remembering how horrified Alya had been from thinking her only living relative abused her, tentatively trying to separate the two. "As much as I like you, I just—I don't want to deal with everyone right now, okay?"

"Then, phase back up there into Luka's house," Bridgette suggested. "He still lives in the same place. His sister moved out so he's alone."

She sighed. "I don't want to."

"Phase to ours, then," was the response to that. "I—your room is still the same. You can just... phase there and it'll be like nothing happened, right?"

"Nothing happened?" Marinette repeated, smile not reaching her eyes. "We both know that's a lie."

"Yeah, and just about everyone else does, too," Bridgette muttered.

"You can come here, okay?" she reiterated, stirring her spoon and causing the ice cubes to make noise again. "It's—it might not be the best, but my living situation will be better soon. I'll actually have a kitchen."

Bridgette frowned.

Sighing, Marinette placed her elbow on the table, resting her chin in her palm. "I'm still coming to terms with what happened. Just—the thought of going back up there makes me want to throw up."

"Does it?"

"It does," she confirmed. "I mean, when my memories were all... murky and coming back, I think I hated you? I didn't know it was _you_, but—seeing someone that looked so much like me being so kind? It was the worst. I couldn't look in the mirror without seeing you."

"We hardly look alike right now," Bridgette muttered, bitter. "We're not even the same age right now."

And while they would be when she grew up before she stopped ageing, Marinette's body wouldn't recover from the years of mistreatment. She'd surely always be smaller and the scars she'd acquired weren't going to magically disappear.

"I like my hair," she announced, touching the toned strands and comparing the light grey colour to her pale fingers. "Don't you?"

Bridgette snorted. "It's weird."

With a grin, she answered, "Weird is me."

"Yeah, you're right about that," Bridgette agreed, shoulders relaxing as she started to fold her napkin again after smoothing it out. There were still creases from where she'd crushed it before. "I suppose it's not too bad. Luka's probably going to ask you to do it for him when you—when you see him again."

She swallowed. "Do you hang out?"

"Hang out?" Bridgette questioned.

"Spend time together?" she clarified.

"Not really." Bridgette shrugged. "We were never—he's your friend, not mine. When you first—first left, we did, yeah, but it was quiet and we were... grieving. It was never a social thing."

She didn't know what to say to that.

And it turned out, she didn't have to. Bridgette breezed past that, instead asking about her favourite things to eat—to which Marinette had to admit her terrible diet and that she hadn't cooked anything outside of cooking lessons at school over a year ago.

It was a stark difference to them spending their free time in the kitchen, baking.

Bridgette's reaction to finding out that Adrien liked to try and bake was one that almost seemed fond. To learn that he tried to make different things for her and had his mother supervising and trying to help had definitely brought a smile onto her face.

And along with that, Bridgette started to ask about his family.

Marinette knew a lot about them.

It didn't feel forced to talk about them. Bridgette actually cared, wanted to know more about Adrien and his family, and she wasn't going to question it any further than that.

When she'd first befriended Luka, Bridgette had still asked all those things, even though they'd grown up together and had been in the same classes. Sure, they hadn't spoken, but Luka's life had been relatively known.

When it came to the topic school, Marinette admitted that she was sticking close to Adrien to protect him, not that she was passionate for their course.

She wasn't shy about admitting she had no ambitions.

While that hadn't exactly been the case before—not when she'd been happy whenever she got a call and could answer it and add another demon to her kill count and it meant that another person was saved—it wasn't as though she'd had a direction in life.

Marinette had lived day-by-day, relaxing and spending time with her sister and friend. There were some angels that tried to make a life on the surface, either to experience a relationship and disappear when their human grew too old or lost interest, or to dabble in a career before growing bored, she had never been the type.

Luka had been tempted to pursue music, but he felt too overwhelmed when there were too many people. He hated eating in the hall with countless others for lunch.

So, that idea had been scrapped.

There would come a time where Adrien would grow old, that grey that wasn't from dye would be featured in his hair, and—

And she wouldn't experience that.

She wasn't human any more.

"Maybe," she started, wetting her lips. "Maybe, in the future, I'll... come back. Right now I want to spend all the time I have with Adrien."

Her sister didn't protest that.

-x-

Once Adrien had believed her that Bridgette meant no harm, he was excited to meet her.

He couldn't extend his illness for longer than the week without causing too much concern. After confirming with Bridgette that she'd leave and let her get back to her life after she met Adrien, they arranged it for the weekend.

There was the issue of where they'd meet.

It was the longest time she hadn't seen Adrien for years. They'd messaged daily, yes, but seeing him in person and watching as the corner of his eyes crinkled as he held the door open for her realise how much she'd missed him.

She darted forward, hugging him tightly and causing an audible breath to escape him as he staggered back, surprised and caught off-guard from the sudden movement.

"I missed you, too," he said through his laughter, returning the hug and holding her close. Although it had to be cold with the door open and he was only there in his pyjamas—his mismatched pyjamas that surely meant he'd just _woken up—_he didn't try to rush her inside. "You're early. I thought I had a while to get dressed first."

Pulling back, she shot him an unimpressed look. "Did you just wake up?"

"Maybe?" His grin showed his dimples. "I was up late last night, okay. I think my mother tried to wake me up before they left, but I slept through it, just like the alarm I set. I'm really useless at trying to be healthy, I guess."

It wasn't her who spoke. "A good first impression."

As rude as her remark had been, Bridgette was standing awkwardly behind her, body language screaming that she was uncomfortable. And when both of their eyes came to look at her, Bridgette looked down at the floor, scuffing her borrowed shoe against the stone that led up to the porch.

"You must be Bridgette," Adrien said, unravelling from the hug and managing to look composed despite his messy appearance. He hadn't even brushed his hair. "It's—it's nice to meet you? Unless you're here to give me the shovel talk or whatever."

Bridgette blinked. "Shovel talk?"

He snorted. "Oh, you two are definitely alike."

Marinette jabbed him lightly in the ribs with her elbow. "Are you going to invite us in or what? I'm freezing my ass off here."

With a grin, he made a show of holding the door open and falling into a casual bow, gesturing for her to go in first. "We wouldn't want that now, would we?"

Marinette rolled her eyes.

And with that, she turned around briefly to grab onto her sister's hands and tugged her up onto the porch, making a point of stamping her shoes out on the mat before stepping inside and taking them off, placing them on the free spot on the shoe rack that she'd slowly become acquainted with.

Bemused, Bridgette did the same, looking entirely out of place as she did so.

"Living room okay?" Adrien asked, already going into the room and moving a pillow from the sofa to make more space. "I thought it would be—well, better than my bedroom? And this way we can see out the window if my parents come back early."

"I'll smuggle Bridgette out back if I need to," she offered.

Bridgette just looked terribly confused about the whole thing.

So, Marinette grabbed onto her hand and pulled her along to the sofa for them both to sit down. Adrien disappeared across the hallway into the kitchen, likely nervous and wanting to make a good impression, leaving the two of them to talk.

"Be nice," Marinette said.

Bridgette frowned. "I haven't done anything."

"He gets jittery when he's nervous," she found herself saying. "And he'll ramble. A lot. Just—please don't be mean to him? He means well. He's _nice_."

"Marinette, I don't hate him or anything," Bridgette answered in a whisper, fiddling with the ends of her hair, twirling them around her finger. "He's—I'm jealous of him, okay? But I'm not going to be mean."

She breathed out. "Okay."

When Adrien came back, it was with three mugs. He'd made a guess and made the same drink for her and her sister, clearly hoping that they had similar tastes.

He was correct.

Bridgette's lips parted in surprise when the mug was placed on a coaster in front of her, and she was clearly lost on what to say when that was accompanied by the three empty plates that were set out for each of them, including a small fork to eat the baked goods that he set down on the table on a large plate.

They were sloppy, a clear sign that he'd been the one to do the piping instead of his mother, but it was the thought that counted.

"You stayed up late for this?" Marinette questioned, fondness clear in her voice.

He flashed her a peace sign. "I had help."

"You kept your mother up late, too?" she accused, shaking her head. "You're a terrible son."

"She offered!" he corrected with a huff, taking a sip of his drink and pulling a face when it was too hot.

Neither of them followed in his footsteps of being an idiot.

"So." Adrien cleared his throat, putting his mug down and almost causing it to spill. "I'm Adrien? I mean, yes, I am Adrien. That wasn't supposed to be a question. I know who I am. Yes."

Marinette snorted.

Bridgette was staring at him in confusion.

"He was worse as a kid," she offered, helping herself to some food, carefully putting it on her plate. "Then again, I didn't speak much. He spoke for the both of us."

"I still do when we're with anyone else," he interjected. "You hate small talk."

"I hate talking to people I dislike," Marinette rebutted.

"That's practically everyone," Adrien returned with a roll of his eyes. "Was she always like this?"

It took a moment to realise that that was meant for Bridgette.

"Not... really?" Bridgette eventually got out, a questioning lilt to her voice. "Marinette was—she cared a lot. Sometimes it was hard to get that across since she was quiet."

He made a thoughtful noise.

Marinette broke the silence by sipping her drink loudly.

And when there was a lull in what was a barely-there conversation to begin with, Adrien quietly said, "I don't know what to say."

Bridgette was sat awkwardly, not at all comfortable. "Same."

Instead of sitting there and trying to talk them through it—acting as a counsellor of sorts—Marinette stood up, plate still in her hand with the little fork, and announced, "I'm going to the toilet."

As she started to walk away, Adrien called out, "With your food?"

"Yes!" she exclaimed, going up the stairs in favour of going to that toilet.

It was far enough away that she wouldn't eavesdrop on whatever they happened to speak about. Marinette knew that her being there made it awkward for them, and she trusted Bridgette not to hurt him and go back on her word.

With the toilet seat closed, she sat on top of it, crossing her legs and started to eat.

She couldn't hear anything.

She wasn't worried.

And when she finished all of her food, even after chewing slowly and trying to savour the flavours, she regretted not piling more onto her plate. She'd gotten more comfortable at his, starting to expect food awaiting regardless of if it was near dinner or not, and she always felt so fond of Adrien's shy question of whether he did a good job or not.

He was improving.

She wondered whether cooking would come naturally to her with her memory back.

Along with all the others subjects she'd studied, she didn't know whether they would all come back seamlessly.

She got up, stretched her legs and tried to see whether she could touch her toes. After that, Marinette hovered by the mirror, idly braiding her hair before pulling it out and trying to do another that was more complicated, trying to replicate the ones that she used to wear back in the day with Bridgette matching. The last time she'd had her hair so perfectly braided had been because of Chloé—

And with that, she was glad that she didn't have much to eat.

She pulled the braid out with shaky hands, avoiding her reflection.

There had been no texts or any contact of any kind from Chloé, yet she was still putting off going to her home and seeing whether she still lived there. There had never been a length of time estimated for how much longer she could embezzle money for, and if Marinette had to bet, she guessed that Chloé had ditched the city in favour of somewhere less crowded.

It had to be a place where being a low-level demon wouldn't mean she had a target painted on her.

Her hands gripped the sink tightly.

It was with a tightness in her chest that she got her phone out, opening up her contact list. And as she pressed Chloé's name before putting the phone to her ear, she breathed out slowly.

The number was disconnected.

It shouldn't have been a surprise.

Chloé had a plan.

She had her life set out, as she had for all those years before they'd met. And yet, Marinette had thought that she'd been apart of that.

She had been, until that night.

And as she stared down at her pale hands, sure that there wasn't any blood underneath her nails or on her skin, she couldn't help but see red.

She made it to the toilet to throw up.

It wasn't the worst thing she'd ever done—not when she'd betrayed her own kind and left without a word, plummeting to the surface and stripping away what made her an angel—but it sure felt like it was.

Chloé was the kindest demon she'd ever met.

Against what was in her best interest, she dialled the same number again. Realistically, she knew that the result wouldn't change, but the sound seemed to echo in the empty bathroom as an automated voice told her that it wasn't in service any more.

It was her fault, wasn't it?

Adrien was safe, but she'd ripped apart one of the only comforts of her life.

The worst part was that she'd do it again.

Chloé had trusted her so fully, hadn't put up a fight and _dared_ her to actually go through with it, and—

And she had to wonder if Bridgette's reaction would be like that if it made down to it.

With shaky legs, she stood up, splashing water on her face and staring at her pale reflection in distaste.

When she opened up the bathroom door, she forgot that misery for a moment because she could hear Adrien laughing. It wasn't the forced kind, the strained one he did when he was trying to be polite and his smile didn't reach his eyes.

Quietly, she climbed down the stairs, holding onto the bannister for support before peering around the corner of the archway. Bridgette was where she'd left her on the sofa, holding the mug in two hands and _smiling_.

Adrien was much the same, a plate resting on his lap as he spoke and used his hands to move along with his words. He was animated, not stunted and awkward from the thought of interacting with her sister any more, and it was clear that he wasn't intimidated.

And when he caught sight of her, his smile was blinding.

Bridgette noticed his attention had wavered, so she looked over her shoulders and raised her eyebrows. "What are you doing?"

"Nothing," she replied, straightening up and sitting down in her place from before. "I needed privacy with my cake, but I decided you two need supervision now."

Adrien asked, "Forget your plate?"

She looked down at her empty hands. "Oh."

"Here." Adrien passed his over to her, not waiting for a response. "Now you have to finish at least half of this unless you want my mother to cry. She thinks it's only me and you here."

"You're not going to make me meet your fake grandfather, are you?" Bridgette asked.

That cleared up some questions she had about what they'd been talking about.

"Hell, no," she blurted, horrified at the thought. "I can hardly stand him as it is. Let's not get you involved as well."

Adrien snorted. "You could always claim Bridgette's your cousin or something."

She blinked. "What?"

"Well," he started, gesturing between the two of them. "You need a cover story for when she comes down, right? It's believable. And Bridgette looks—older? Like she's actually an adult and can take care of herself."

Marinette narrowed her eyes. "Are you trying to call me pathetic?"

Adrien grinned. "Very."

"Does it really matter if you have a cover story?" Bridgette questioned, comfortable enough to lean back against the plush decoration cushions that Adrien's father always placed perfectly on the sofa. "It's not like I'm going to spend time with anyone else."

"I... might've told Alya that she's your cousin already," Adrien admitted, running a hand through his hair. "I didn't—it didn't seem like it was my place to mention angels and all that? I mean, they're both—her and Nino—they're under the impression that everything that's happening is because you've killed so many demons, not that you have, like, a past life that's catching up to you."

All she could really say to that download was, "Oh."

Bridgette huffed. "Good, they shouldn't be told."

"They know about demons, though," Marinette pointed out. "I just—I didn't want to try and describe everything else when I didn't even know what was going on."

"Was the plan to scare them or to turn them into hunters?" her sister questioned, tilting her head curiously. "You're not usually the type to... share."

Adrien snorted. "She's still not."

"It wasn't from choice," Marinette muttered, pulling her sleeve down over her hand and fiddling with the fabric. "Look, let's—let's move on from that, yeah? The cousin story works. No one's going to question it."

Bridgette sighed. "If you say so."

Adrien insisted, "It's a good idea!"

-x-

When Bridgette left, it was after going to a nearby laundromat and sitting on the uncomfortable chairs for what seemed like hours because Marinette refused to leave and suffer having her laundry stolen. Bridgette was dubious about that actually happening, but she didn't put up a fight.

She did complain, though.

There was a plan.

Bridgette didn't have a phone, but she could phase down to the surface when thinking of a specific location. It similar to answering a call and phasing to where the human asking for help needed them to be in the way that they could only phase back up instead of somewhere else on the surface.

Adrien took a while to understand that.

Marinette told him it made complete sense.

"How are you going to move quickly on Earth, then?" he questioned, thoughtful. "What if you get another call? Do you just—can you only hear them when you're—well, up? Are they blocked out when you're down here?"

There wasn't time to answer.

He immediately latched onto that and asked, "What if I think of _you_ and pray? Will you hear it in your head? Can I angel booty call you whenever I want?"

"No," she interrupted, placing her hand on his knee and shutting him up in an instant. "As you said, it only works up there. And I—to be honest, I don't really know if I'll be... capable of that any more? There's not a lot of research about fallen angels."

He asked quietly, "They don't come back?"

"Not really, no," she confirmed. "I think there's only been one or two before. It's—think about it, Adrien. What defenceless human would stumble across demons and start killing them? I should've been dead long ago."

"So," he started, a sudden smile spreading across his lips. "No one can deny you're amazing, right?"

"...Sure."

Bridgette left without crying.

It was with the promise of returning the following weekend.

Although Marinette was still adamant that she wasn't going back up there, instead staying down on the ground and continuing her new life, her sister was still hopeful that she'd cave in and give in to her wishes. Bridgette had held her so tight that she was sure her ribs would've been crushed normally, and they hugged enough to count as one of the longest embraces she'd ever had.

Bridgette sniffed. "You better be here, okay? If I phase into this dirty room and you're gone, I'm going to—I'll cry."

"Threatening," she teased. "I'll leave a note if I've gone out. Promise."

Bridgette pointed her finger and narrowed her eyes. "You better."

"I'll be here," she vowed. "I'm not going anywhere, remember?"

"I love you," Bridgette said, smoothing out her sweater that really wasn't meant for the winter weather. She'd changed back into the clothing she'd arrived in, looking out of place and cold next to the ice outside. "I'll let you get back to your weird human life for now."

Her smile reached her eyes. "I love you, too."

It was the first time she'd said it to someone other than Adrien and actually meant it.

And then, in a blink of an eye, Bridgette was gone.

She didn't cry.

But when she went to Adrien's later, slipping into his window for the first time in over a week, he didn't need to ask her if she was okay to have her burst into tears. It was partially because of her sister being gone again, distant and out of reach and not able to pick up the phone to talk to her, and that Chloé had left.

She didn't voice any of that.

Adrien didn't pressure her to tell him what was wrong. He pulled her into a loose embrace, making her rest her head on his shoulder and curl into him, idly running his fingers through her short hair and having Plagg playing with her shoelaces be the only noise in the room.

It was amazing how composed Adrien was when she felt like a wreck.

He'd grown so much from the terrified boy bound in a demon's bedroom, confused and terrified of the unknown, and he'd taken to his new lifestyle of being paranoid and distant from others with grace.

It helped that he said he didn't mind not hanging out with others if she wasn't there.

And, somehow, that didn't stunt him with new friendships with their class-mates. Adrien conversed with them easily in class, exchanging quips and jokes despite rarely meeting them outside.

Marinette knew their names and a bit more, but she wasn't interested in getting to know them.

Adrien was fine with that.

"I find it hard to imagine you being... friendly?" he started, bumping his foot against hers underneath the dining table. "You're nice to me, yes, but to some random person? Marinette, you look like you want to kill anyone when they so much as bump into you in the hallway."

She'd lugged over her old laptop after finding out the essay they were working on was required to be printed out or submitted online. Adrien had offered for her to use his father's computer and for them to go into the study—something they'd never been allowed to do before—but she didn't want to intrude.

Instead of hurting their backs by sitting on the floor of the living room, Adrien had dragged her into the kitchen instead. There was an hour or so before either of his parents started dinner, and his plan was for them to be done before that.

That was wishful thinking.

"I'm a delight," she deadpanned.

He laughed. "You are, yes."

It was fine for him to be curious about her past.

So, she found herself admitting, "It wasn't like I went out of my way to befriend everyone. I just—I liked making people smile? It made me feel like I accomplished something, I guess."

He helpfully stated, "You make me smile."

"Yes, thank you for that." She rolled her eyes. "I didn't really have any ambition, not until I realised that I was good at... hunting."

The last word had been spoken quietly with a pointed look to their surroundings.

Adrien didn't seem to care. "So, you cared, but you didn't... like us?"

"It never really crossed my mind?" Marinette replied. "I thought that no one deserves a demon ripping them apart, even your defenceless kind."

"What about now?" he questioned, tilting his head. "Has that changed?"

"Now..." Marinette leaned back, almost causing two legs of the chair to lift off of the floor. "I wouldn't want it to happen to you—your parents or Alya and Nino. But... everyone else? I honestly wouldn't give a shit."

He didn't flinch and his expression didn't crumble.

If anything, he wasn't surprised.

"It's natural, isn't it?" she mused, not averting her eyes. "Survival of the fittest is the saying, right? Demons aren't going to change when they're left down here to rot. It's enough that they're blending in and only occasionally acting out."

With a dramatic sigh, he propped his elbow on the table and rested his head in his palm. "I'm never going to be fit."

He wasn't trying to argue or attempting to change her mind. Adrien accepted her line of thinking without questions, understanding it despite her insulting him in the process.

There wasn't anyone else like him.

She laughed. "You look it, though."

He made a disapproving noise. "Are you complimenting me after calling me the weakest on the food chain?"

"Yes," she confirmed. "And offering comfort and affection in exchange for you liking me."

He made a show of thinking about it. "That sounds like a fair deal."

"It is," Marinette agreed, nodding her head. "You're not going to find a deal like this anywhere else, I assure you."

His dimples showed when he smiled. "I wouldn't want to."

"Who's flirting now?" she teased.

Adrien winked at her.

They didn't finish their essays before his father came in to make dinner.

Going back to school was anti-climatic.

Their class-mates asked Adrien whether he was okay, questioning if he was fine to be back in so soon since he hadn't taken so many days off before, and the question was extended to her as an afterthought.

She wasn't offended.

There were a few jokes that they'd shared their illness because they were always together. Adrien had laughed them off and said that it was a price he was willing to pay.

He wasn't shy about making his feelings about her known.

He had no issues with draping himself over her and getting into her personal space in the middle of class, often causing others to snicker and tell them to get a room.

Adrien smiled every time, his ears turning red.

It never stopped him from doing it again.

The first time in months that she met up with Alya, Adrien was by her side and enthusiastically swinging their joined hands as they walked down the street. Instead of going home, they'd wandered into the shopping centre and gotten something to drink. Marinette not liking the flavour led to him drinking both and consuming too much sugar.

He was cute.

They met up at their designated spot; a diner that they'd all gone to before, a favourite for the desserts that were on the menu. Alya and Nino were loitering outside, Nino's shoulders shaking with his laughter that slowly became audible the closer they got there.

Nino saw them first, raising his hand and waving, smiling wide.

There was no resentment there.

While she thought that, maybe, Alya would be a bit peeved at being shut out, Alya's reaction was to turn around and immediately sprint to close the distance. Alya barrelled into her, pulling her into a tight hug that was complete with her curly face getting in her face.

Marinette spluttered.

Alya hugged tighter.

It wasn't awkward.

The conversation flowed naturally. When they got into the diner, grabbing a booth by the corner, Alya pulled her into the seat beside her, leaving Adrien and Nino to sit beside each other.

And while they were happy for her, bringing up the subject of her cousin and congratulating her for finding her, the topic was quickly switched when Marinette didn't know what to say and instead shuffled in her seat, fidgeting.

It was obvious they were avoiding the problem.

Neither of them were asking why she'd been avoiding them for so long. Adrien was good at mentioning funny things that had happened—including his father making him drink some awful tea because it was supposed to make him feel better—it didn't stop Alya and Nino from sneaking glances at her, always smiling when she met their gaze instead of pretending that they hadn't been caught at all.

So, when their food arrived, Marinette bluntly said, "Chloé moved away and I don't want to talk about it."

And that was that.

Adrien gently bumped her foot underneath the table.

At least, she thought it was him.

When Marinette excused herself to go to the toilet, she'd barely made through the first door before Alya followed her in.

There was nothing threatening about it.

Instead, Alya pulled her into another hug, standing by the sinks and embracing in a way where she could see their reflection in the mirror.

"I'm not asking you to talk to me about everything," Alya started quietly, holding her tightly, as if she was trying to convey her feelings through touch alone. "But I—I just don't want you to push me away, okay? I'm here for whatever you need, even if it's just a stupid film night to forget about your problems."

All she could say to that was, "I didn't mean to shut you out."

"I'm not offended if you did," Alya replied, pulling back so they could look at each other. Alya's glasses were askew but she wasn't correcting them. "I'm your friend, not your keeper. We're allowed to have secrets."

"You have secrets?" she questioned, raising her eyebrows. "You overshare everything."

"I overshare the unimportant things," Alya corrected with a laugh. "It throws people off my trail, you know? My biggest secrets are kept in the dark because of that."

And when Marinette laughed, it was like all the tension left her.

Alya was a good friend.

She was persistent, bossy, and had horrible table manners, but she was wonderful in her own way. Marinette had never fantasied about being friends back when she watched from afar, but from years of being close, she couldn't imagine life without her any more.

Alya placed one hand around her mouth, as though it would help when she whispered, "The secret's that I accidentally got a really bad virus on the family computer and blamed it on my little sister. No one even _suspected_ me."

She blinked.

Alya stood upright, grinning widely. "Now you're in cahoots with me."

Dumbly, she questioned, "Cahoots?"

And with that, the laughter and chatting that followed wasn't filled with unsaid questions or pointed looks.

Alya wasn't going to push her for anything more than she wanted to say.

And Nino—

Nino was wonderful, in his own way.

When they parted, she got a message from him later on that included song recommendations that she might've missed over the months. He included links to the videos online, giving his thoughts on a few and asking her to say what she thought when she was free.

She thought he was kind.

While her feelings for humans weren't consistent, not when she was so distant and honestly didn't care when someone got hurt right beside her—whether it was their own fault or not—the ones close to her were who she wanted to protect.

There was always the argument that she could like others if she spent time with them, something Bridgette brought up the next time she came down, but that was forgetting the main change in her.

Marinette didn't care.

She didn't _want_ to.

And no one was going to try and force her. Marinette was indifferent and distant to others, having only just warmed up to Adrien's parents from the continued exposure with them, and even after being class-mates with the same people for years, she couldn't care less when they got hurt—or if she was the one to do the hurting.

It wasn't a healthy view on life, but neither was her previous mindset.

Of the two, Marinette preferred the latter.

She could focus more time on who she cared about; to cosy up to Adrien, feeling his warmth as they cuddled on the sofa or his bed, and put her energy into keeping him safe.

Adrien's idea of a joke had been to get her to take an online test to see whether she qualified to be a sociopath.

Then, when the result caused them both to burst into laughter, they spent the rest of the night each doing different tests that got increasingly stupider until it got to one that was to find out which breakfast food they identified more with.

Adrien was offended with his result.

Marinette had a point of bringing it over the next time she dropped by his in the evening.

-x-

Bridgette didn't want to see the wonders of the world that humans could see.

Instead, all she wanted to do was spend time together. Bridgette was interested in Marinette's life; where she went to school, her favourite places to go, and what made her happiest.

Most of those could be answered with just Adrien.

Bridgette didn't hate him, thankfully.

"He seems nice," Bridgette replied, concentrating in the mirror and she braided her long hair in a specific way. "A bit of a talker, yeah. Not the type of person I ever expected you to end up with—but you were never that interested in romance in the first place."

She hummed. "He's more than nice."

"I'm sure he is," Bridgette agreed, amused. "You're not going to start writing sonnets about him, are you?"

With a laugh, she responded, "I'm awful at poetry."

"Love might make you good at it, for once," her sister teased.

"No, thank you."

When she was with Bridgette, it was effortless, the same way it was with Adrien. She wasn't nervous about what came out of her mouth, didn't have to think about her answers, and the two of them accepted her for her faults.

Of course, it took Bridgette a while to come to terms with that.

They saw each other almost every weekend.

With that indefinitely in the schedule, Marinette stole more bags during the week, snatching out the wallets and taking all of the money that she could. There was still the worry that she needed a bank account in the future for student loans for university, a pain that needed to be sorted sometime soon.

She stole enough to splurge and buy Bridgette her own pair of shoes.

Marinette made a show of gesturing towards the cardboard box in her motel room, wiggling her fingers and grinning in anticipation.

Bridgette hugged her tightly in return.

"I'll wear them whenever I come down," Bridgette vowed, putting a hand over her heart.

She grinned. "You better sweat in them in the summer."

And suddenly, there was more of a rhythm to her life. She looked forward to the weekends, trading off her time with Adrien to spend that short amount of time with her sister, doing whatever came to Bridgette's mind. The one time she suggested that they go to a shopping centre to experience a normal human life, Bridgette regretted agreeing to it within half an hour.

Marinette laughed loudly at that.

They were similar.

Marinette had been clueless and uneducated in teenage things; barely knew any of the films Adrien and his friends referenced, could barely hold a game controller, and wasn't up-to-date with slang, and it was like seeing herself in her sister as Bridgette experienced the same thing.

As much as their home had in common with the surface, she had to wonder if Heaven had kept up with the trends.

Then again, from what she knew, no one had gotten in after dying for decades.

From the clothes Bridgette wore than she arrived, there was evidence that fashion trends matched.

"Has it changed?" Marinette abruptly asked. "Up there?"

They were on her bed, lounging with their legs tangled in a way that she'd never done with Alya. Bridgette had insisted on phasing down with her pillow in her hands, triumphant when Marinette turned around to see her standing there with it in her hold, but all complaints left her about the lack of space already in the room when she felt how soft it was.

Bridgette didn't look at her in surprise.

She did tense, however.

Marinette didn't comment on it.

"A bit?" Bridgette said, turning her head to crack her neck with an pleased noise when it actually happened. "It hasn't... really changed that much? Technology's the same as down here, of course. And everyone's still annoying in their own ways. You remember Jinho? He used to be really righteous and preaching that we should follow the old ways?"

She had to think about that. "Vaguely? He was the one that—he wanted us to rank everyone differently, right?"

"That's the one," Bridgette confirmed. "Well, he got really drunk... twelve years ago? And he got really offended when he got called weak, so he came down here and _died_."

Marinette questioned, "Died?"

"Deceased." Bridgette nodded, amusement clear in her voice. "I can't remember who, but someone came down with him to... supervise? Be witness to his stupidity? He took on two demons and died, basically. It was really pathetic."

Laughter escaped her at that. "_Two_?"

"Must've been some good alcohol to be that useless." Bridgette snickered. "But now, there's not really anyone trying to make it how it used to be, you know? It's been so long that it's accepted that we're the ones in charge."

Curious, she asked, "And how's that going?"

"Eh." With a shrug of her shoulders, Bridgette said, "Nothing's really happened, honestly. We're not letting anyone in and answering a few calls. Since you, no one's really been that bothered about trying to answer them."

It was how she'd imagined, then.

"You're missed," Bridgette whispered. "You—it wasn't only me and Luka that mourned you. Everyone did, in their own way."

She wrinkled her nose at that. "Sounds fake."

"Really," her sister insisted. "No one _hated_ you. Some disliked how fanatic you were about killing demons, yeah, but that was mostly because you put us all to shame. Then again, you were just putting your top of the class skills into action."

"Better than you," Marinette murmured.

"Always," Bridgette agreed with a laugh. "That just means I'm better at other things. It's only fair, right?"

Her interest grew.

Each time Bridgette came down, she learned a little more.

She learned the names of those that had passed away, some being ones that they'd grown up with and had first had lessons with when they were young, long before Marinette had dominated with her fighting skills. The numbers dwindled, slowly trickling down with every passing year, and Marinette realised how devastating it had to have been for Bridgette to think that she belonged with the deceased.

With only angels in charge of Heaven, no other angels had been made for centuries.

Although it wasn't forbidden, many angels had dabbled with the human race long ago, growing bored and retreating to their ideal life up above.

Marinette had never been one of them.

And yet, as she walked on the surface and stubbornly refused to return and face the consequences of other angels looking at her in pity for her choices, she didn't regret her choice.

She'd do it all again for Adrien.

It didn't stop her curiosity, though. She asked Bridgette about Luka, about what the two of them had been doing, and how Bridgette spent her days when she wasn't slumming it down on the surface with her.

The answers she got weren't satisfying enough.

Her sister reminded her, "You could always come visit."

She refused.

For all the months she'd become an angel again, she couldn't bare to bring her wings out to look at them. There would be a stark difference between her and the other angels—something that wouldn't be hidden when they weren't on the surface.

Adrien didn't pester her, but he did keep asking her random questions about wings.

He really wanted to make sure that he wouldn't be allergic to them like normal feathers.

Her response to that was, "Are you calling me a bird?"

Adrien had winked at her.

It was her avoiding the important things.

Early February, she went to Chloé's.

There had been that small twinge of hope that, maybe, Chloé had only changed her mobile number and would still be in the city. It would've been horribly dangerous for her, and Marinette turning up out of the blue and knocking on the door would've only led to an awkward situation where she couldn't fully describe what had happened without choking up.

She'd never planned to tell Chloé that she'd killed her.

And when a new occupant opened the door, she realised that she wouldn't have to.

Chloé really was gone.

For the first time, she set out to find a demon to kill for more than just looking at Adrien too much in _months_. It wasn't a matter of her stealing money and then going back to her motel room to mope; rather, it felt cathartic when her hands were stained with blood, breath not strained at all from the effort she'd had to put in to dodge the demon's fist, and the sword in grasp felt so comforting and familiar.

She wasn't horrified to realise that she'd missed it.

It got her emotions out in a healthier way than bottling them up and shutting everyone but Adrien out.

Instead, when she left Adrien's in the evening after staying for dinner, she used her sense to detect who was a demon when they were on the edge, visible and able to be identified when she took a step back and forth to locate who exactly it was.

While she didn't have Chloé supplying her names and addresses any more, she remembered some. She had the information stored in her phone. And if some had moved away and another occupant was in the home, that wasn't her problem.

It was _fun_.

There wasn't anyone to laugh at her jokes, no one to clap sarcastically and critique her skill—

It was her and her own heartbeat echoing in her head. There was no pounding pain in her head, screaming at her that her actions were familiar—not when it felt so natural and she could remember all the times she'd done it in the past, from back when the city was first being built to the modern times.

Sometimes, it felt like she was two wholes shoved together and felt like she was splitting at the seams.

She wasn't one or the other any more.

Of all the things Marinette knew, it was that she could be cruel.

She wanted to direct that at the right people.

-x-

It was May when she visited Heaven.

Their course had finished.

They'd taken their final exam the day before, teachers wishing them the best, and it meant that she had to wait for acceptance letters from the same universities as Adrien to see whether she'd be able to attend the same one after they'd visited for interviews.

The issue of a bank account had been surprisingly easy, somehow.

She only put a few hundred in there, not wanting to cause suspicion from the amount she was hoarding in her motel room. Plus, it was strange not to have cash in her pocket. It took a while to feel comfortable using her card every now and then to leave a trail, even if it was something as small and purchasing a drink.

Marinette existed.

Almost all of her information was fake, yes, but it was getting her further in life than she'd ever thought she'd get. Surviving to become a teenager was a surprise in the first place, but it didn't really compare to the realisation that she'd be recognised as an adult soon.

That was a strange thought.

Even with centuries worth of memories under her belt—the flashes, vague impressions of what had happened that had become dull with age—she didn't feel responsible.

She knew that she angered quickly.

But when she saw Adrien's smile when it was directed at her, everything felt worth it.

If she wanted to have a future with Adrien, she needed to sort out her past.

It was with that in mind that she stood idly in her motel room, staring at the small mirror that was provided above the empty dresser. Her clothes had never been unpacked, her belongings for the most part stashed away and ready for her to leave at any moment, and it had never truly felt like a home.

The only happiness the room had was when Bridgette came to stay, complaining about the dirty surroundings the whole time.

It wasn't the weekend.

Bridgette wasn't due for two more days, wouldn't appear randomly in the room to greet her with her nose upturned at the discoloured wallpaper on the walls, but she really wasn't that far away.

They couldn't communicate when they were in different worlds, if it could be classed as that.

Human technology didn't work up there, and any angel-made products had the same effect down below. It was only the weapons that fulfilled their purpose.

With one last glance in the mirror, taking in the roots that stood out against her light hair, the dark circles under her eyes from where she'd tossed and turned the previous night, she looked as put together as always.

She looked a mess.

It was a stark difference to the old Marinette that took care in her appearance, smoothing out her hair and making sure that everything matched before she stepped outside her home. It was only when she came down to Earth to fight that she looked roughed up, returning with blood splatters and torn clothing that she immediately went to change afterwards.

She didn't care about appearances any more.

Adrien liked how she looked.

She closed her eyes, relaxing her shoulders and letting out a deep breath.

It felt like she was on the verge of sleep from being so comfortable, body momentarily feeling weightless and like she'd stumble if she tried to move, and then her clothes moved.

Her wings were grey.

And when she blankly stared in the mirror to take in the change, to see how they'd changed from the startling white that had always been so bright and beautiful—

She realised they were almost the same shade as her hair.

Marinette laughed.

It didn't sound hollow, but it wasn't filled with happiness.

The wings were translucent, almost shimmering, appearing not to be there completely. They hadn't sprouted out of her back and ruined her clothing; rather, they floated an inch or so away from her shoulder blades, where they should've been coming out from her.

She ran her fingers over the feathers, feeling the softness she denied herself for so long.

It was comforting, in a way.

They might've been dull and discoloured, but not everything had changed.

The grey would never go.

She didn't feel bad.

Although she wouldn't agree with her past actions any more—not when her ability to care was nowhere near where it had been before—she couldn't fault herself since she'd met Adrien because of it. If the discolouration of her wings and the varied reactions from the others of her kind were the downsides of it, she could accept them.

The wings disappeared as painlessly as it had been to get them out.

With a message to Adrien saying that she'd be gone for a few hours, to which she got heart emojis in response, she breathed out slowly and visualised the place she had in mind.

It didn't feel like she'd moved at all.

Yet, when she opened her eyes, she was greeted with the bright yellow paint on the walls of the living room.. A few things had changed—the pictures on the wall, small trinkets that were on display, and the sofa and armchair were completely different and more up-to-date with modern furniture—but for the most part, it was the same.

The carpet still had the stain in the corner from where she'd gotten blood on it.

Bridgette had wanted to cover it with a rug, but it was in such an awkward position that they couldn't make it look natural.

Their cottage was a breath of fresh air.

She walked through into the kitchen, cold tiles soothing on her feet. The counters had been replaced, wooden and polished, looking expensive and more elegant than any space she'd lived in before. It looked well lived in, and the dirty mug that was left in the sink was a sign that Bridgette had been there recently.

Her bedroom was the same.

Marinette didn't take a step past the doorway before closing the door again, not wanting to face that yet.

She knew that her sword would be in there.

And wasn't that a strange thought?

The weapons that she'd gotten from Aloys had been all she'd needed for years. She'd pushed the thought out of her mind that there had been a sword previously that she'd had to her name, one that she'd killed more demons with than anyone else within her generation.

It was a sword that she'd gladly had on her before, but it was useless in Heaven.

Her new one wasn't.

And for as much as she'd spoken to Bridgette in the past few months, her sister didn't know about it.

It wasn't a secret she wasn't going to part with.

Marinette went back downstairs, the same step creaking as she slowly went down, a fond smile curling on her lips as she remembered all the times her sister had woken up and complained about the noise, but they'd never gotten it repaired or replaced. While the kitchen had clearly had work done to it, the only other room with that had been significantly altered was the bathroom they'd shared.

She put the kettle on in the kitchen, helping herself to a drink and selecting a mug that was entirely unfamiliar from the cupboard. All of it had to be replaced, of course; it had been decades since she'd been there, but every change had her pausing and trying to connect it to the pieces of her memories.

She wasn't upset.

Bridgette had to move on with her life.

If she'd returned and everything was how it had been before, she would've been sad.

Bridgette had always encouraged her to bond with others, to make an actual friend to spend more than a few minutes with so they wouldn't be entirely dependant on each other.

So, when it took until sunset for Bridgette to return, she was glad that her sister was still doing the same.

Bridgette came in, kicking off her shoes before going to switch the light on, touching the already turned up switch and staring at it in confusion for a moment.

Then, she whipped her head around, staring with wide eyes.

"Hey," Marinette greeted, holding up her hand that wasn't holding her topped up mug to wave. "Had a good day?"

Bridgette didn't move. "You're here."

"Yeah," she confirmed, knees up to her chest and feeling more comfortable than she thought she would've originally. "I wasn't going to leave without saying hey when I realised you weren't here. I'm sticking around for a while more."

It wasn't the right thing to say. "You're—you're staying?"

"For a few hours," Marinette clarified, words coming out louder than intended. "I—I finished my last exams yesterday. I've got the whole summer free now."

Finally moving to sit beside her on the sofa, Bridgette asked, "You came to tell me that?"

Bridgette had gotten more freckles from being in the sun.

"About time I came to visit, right?" Marinette replied, finishing off her drink and setting the mug down on the coffee table. There wasn't any coasters in sight. "I like what you've done with the place, by the way. It looks nice."

Her sister looked misty-eyed. "You like it?"

"Yeah," she said, nudging her gently with her elbow. "You're the one with the better taste, right? I'm shit at art and picking out matching colours. That's always been a you thing."

Bridgette snorted. "That hasn't changed for you, has it?"

Haughtily, she raised her head up. "I don't know what that's supposed to mean."

"It means I've seen you wearing only black," Bridgette retorted, gesturing towards her outfit that really was just that.

"My socks were blue," she muttered. "I just—I took them off before I came here."

"Barefoot in my home?" Bridgette narrowed her eyes. "How unhygienic. That's disgusting."

She laughed. "You're barefoot right now."

"Yes, but I'm not tracking in muck from the dump that you call a home for now," was the snotty reply she got to that. "How long have you been waiting, really? I'm sorry I didn't know you were here."

"A couple of hours," she said with a shrug. "It's fine, really. I told you my schedule's pretty free right now. I have time to kill."

Bridgette tentatively asked, "You're not preoccupied with Adrien?"

"I can't spend every moment with him," she pointed out. "Besides, I couldn't wait until tomorrow to see you. I'm impatient."

"You are," Bridgette agreed, fondness clear in her voice. "Did you want to do anything? There's some new stuff we could check out, or—"

"Can we stay in?" Marinette interrupted, talking quietly. "I only want to see you right now."

Bridgette's face softened. "Okay."

She beamed.

The kitchen had changed, but it felt like it had before when they were in there together cooking.

Marinette felt at home as she sliced the vegetables, and there was no need to try and hide anything different about her. Her class-mates weren't there to look at her, Adrien's parents weren't going to walk in and see that the knife didn't hurt her when she cut herself, and everything felt so natural, like she hadn't forgotten all the knowledge for over a decade.

Bridgette did disappear for a while to fetch juice for the two of them.

It was her favourite.

And as happy as she felt, there was still that underlying feeling that she didn't belong.

Bridgette looked at her so happily, smile always bright and meeting her eyes, so she didn't voice those thoughts aloud.

Adrien understood, though.

He wanted to know everything about her, but without pushing.

His curiosity wasn't forced.

"There's no money?" Adrien questioned, brow furrowed in confusion. "How do you—you buy stuff, right? Like, how does that _work_?"

"I'd say we're not greedy, not compared to your kind," Marinette mused, tucking her hair behind her ear. "We've got a large storage room that has all the food and items that you could ever want. It's restocked daily. I don't think I've ever seen it close to empty before."

Adrien seemed dubious. "For real? Stuff's out of stock here all the time."

"It's an automatic thing," she replied. "Like, say you wanted a specific television? Come the next day, it'll be in the storage room for you to take. It's—it sounds really weird to say it aloud, but everything's taken care of up there."

Curious, he questioned, "Everything?"

"Even cleaning." She shrugged. "You can clean if you want to, yeah, but otherwise come the next day—gone?"

"That sounds... weird," he said slowly. "Everything's just—taken care of? So there's nothing for you to do?"

"It gets boring," Marinette admitted in a whisper, remembering those days of wondering what to do. "Food doesn't rot, flowers don't wilt, we don't age, and it's just... like being frozen in time, forever."

He swallowed. "I thought Heaven was supposed to be a good place."

"It is, in a way," she quietly said. "There's no need to cook because food's served all day near the town centre; provided and kept to pristine condition despite how many hours it's been out. There's an endless amount of time to indulge in your hobbies instead of having to work or clean up after yourself. It's—it's what humans think they want, isn't it?"

He didn't have a response to that.

Marinette murmured, "It gets dull."

"With so many people, how does everything get sorted out?" he asked.

"There's more of you," she replied in a soft voice, looking down at her hands. "There's not—there's probably more humans in our school than there are angels left in total."

He sucked in a breath.

"My home—up there—it didn't used to be the only one, but it's decreased over the years. There wasn't a point of having other districts when our numbers started to dwindle so much. It was smarter to keep all the decision makers in one place."

"Like you," he murmured. "Archangels, right?"

She breathed out. "You remembered."

"Of course," Adrien replied, smile showing his dimples. "Everything you tell me is important. I push out the unimportant stuff like maths to remember all of it."

She snorted. "That's your excuse for being bad with numbers?"

He winked.

There was something sweet about how much he wanted to know. Adrien wanted to understand where she'd come from, and what she'd given up in order to be on the surface with him. While it wasn't a secret that she wasn't keen on going back to it, that didn't stop the questions.

"What would happen?" he questioned. "If you went back? Would they—would the other angels resent you?"

"I think some would be offended that I'd left without saying anything," she murmured, pressing her head further into his shoulder from where they were tangled up in his bed. "I think the fact that I'm—that I'm not human any more is proof that I'm more suited to be an angel."

Adrien's bright idea to counteract the hot weather was to point his fan at the both of them and to kick the duvet down by their feet. It was still too hot and she'd pushed her shirt up to feel the breeze on her back, but she wasn't going to pass up cuddling up to him.

It was one of her favourite things.

Another thing she was found of was how Adrien didn't often think his words through.

He blurted out, "How are you made?"

She laughed into his neck.

"Shut up," he muttered, and she didn't need to look up to know his ears had gone red from embarrassment. "I'm serious. You say your kind is dying out and I want to understand. You're not made like—like me, right?"

"No sex involved," she confirmed, amused. "My generation was the last to come to be. There was someone higher, right? And because they willed it, we were created."

He quietly asked, "As... children?"

"I believe so," she murmured, recalling her young memories. "But it's different. It was like coming into life as a child that already had basic functions and knew how to think? Lessons were about defence and learning to take care of ourselves, not maths and grammar like down here. I knew that already."

"Born superior," he muttered. "Typical."

Marinette laughed. "I'm literally a celestial being."

Adrien's voice wobbled with his own laughter. "Are you really telling me you're a celestial being in bed?"

She hit him.

His laughter grew louder, so he pressed his face into his pillow to muffle it.

"Sometimes," she started wistfully, closing her eyes and she joined him on the pillow, able to feel his breath on her face. "I used to wonder what it would be like when they came back. Because—I'd been trusted to run the place, you know? I wanted someone to validate my feelings and appreciate everything that I'd been doing because—because none of the others ever put in as much effort as me."

His knee bumped her as he tangled their legs together, getting comfortable.

The way he didn't jump to tell her that she was right was another thing she liked.

Adrien always told her his feelings.

"But then, I realised it was pointless," she murmured, letting out a sigh. "There's so little of us and so many of you. Demons are _endless_. There's no possible way to answer every call around the world."

Adrien quietly told her, "You did good."

"You might think so," she said, opening her eyes and offering him a small smile. "But now I know I was naïve. It was stupid."

He pointed out, "You saved a lot of people."

"For what?" she questioned. "You humans kill each other anyway. What's the point of saving anyone when they'll be killed by someone who's not even a _demon_? It's a waste of time and it did nothing for me in the end."

"You've been saying that a lot," he whispered.

She blinked. "What?"

"You're referring to yourself as an angel," Adrien clarified.

"Oh," she breathed. "I guess I am."

When had that happened?

"That's good," he encouraged, leaning forward to press their foreheads together. "No use in pretending you're not, right? It's what you are. Embrace it."

Marinette closed her eyes, letting her silence be her answer to that.

Adrien persisted. "You're amazing and you should accept that."

With a quiet laugh, she replied, "That's not the same thing at all."

"You've been going to see your sister up there, haven't you?" he asked. And when she said yes to that, he continued on to question, "What if we don't get into the same university? Are you—you're not going to go to a separate one, are you?"

There was no point lying.

"No," she answered. "I'm not doing this because I want an education. I'm not planning on getting a job down here or becoming a normal part of society. I just—I want to protect you. If that means escorting you to and from classes, I'm okay with that."

"Back to your stalker status," he teased. "You can't give up your whole life for me. No one's going to do anything in public, right? That's stupid."

"I won't linger outside the door and make it obvious," she retorted with a huff. "I followed you around for over a year without you even noticing. You don't get to judge me."

"But I'm an idiot," Adrien proudly announced, laughter clear in his voice. "Besides, won't a demon be able to feel you? Before me?"

"I can turn it off," she said back. "It's only when my wings are out that they're able to—well, know? If they're away, they have no idea I'm not human."

He mused, "And you're only telling me this now?"

"You never _asked_."

"I haven't asked a lot of things," Adrien replied, amused. "But you still tell me them. What other secrets are you keeping from me? I know you're an alien."

"I am not an alien!"

He laughed. "You're not from Earth."

"I've been around before you were born, dumbass," she shot back.

"And how old is that?" he asked, bumping their noses together before pressing a kiss to the end of hers. "Is this pedophilia?"

"I will kick you," she threatened.

Adrien snorted. "Oh, you know how to woo me."

She sniffed. "I hate you."

"You love me," he said in a sing-song voice. "And even if we don't get in the same school, we'll figure something out."

There had never been a time where she'd imagined living with him. When Adrien had suggested that they could try and get into the same dorm, it had seemed like wistful thinking.

With exam results revealed, Marinette was pleased to find out they did get into the same university. It wasn't the nearest to his home, but it wasn't across the country. It was an hour away by car, with dormitories to choose from, from on-campus to outside available, and it was with Adrien making up a lie that they managed to sort out where they were going.

In retrospect, he should've told her about what he'd said before she came over.

Marinette had turned up at his door, pressing the bell and waiting for someone to open it for her, when she was surprised by his mother opening it and immediately wrapping her into a hug and telling her that they'd sort everything out.

Terribly confused, she hadn't known what to say in return to that.

Then, his father was there, putting a gentle hand on her shoulder and giving her quiet words of comfort and offering her their spare bedroom for her to use.

Adrien came running down the stairs, taking in the scene with wide eyes before he stuttered out that they were going up to his room.

He tugged her by her wrist.

"I'm so sorry," he blurted as soon as they were inside, pushing his door to. "I didn't think it through. I wanted to help but I think I've done the opposite now."

All she could really say to that was, "What?"

"Right, well," Adrien said, holding both of her hands in his as he stood in front of her, anxiousness coming across in his stance. "I might've changed your story? By accident. It was an accident. I was going to wait until you gave me the okay to go through with it, but it was all that was on my mind so I just—I came out with it this morning."

She frowned. "Morning?"

"Afternoon, shut up," he said, pouting. "I said your grandfather kicked you out."

"...I'm sorry, what?"

"I panicked!" Adrien let go of her hands, running one through his hair and looking frazzled. "I needed a reason why they'd never met him, right? And then they started asking me more questions about whether he's okay with us going off to school where you'll be too far away to take care of him, and—"

"And?" she prodded.

Adrien swallowed. "I might've said he's abusive?"

It was an incredulous laugh that left her. "Not _again_!"

"I didn't have a lot to go on!" he defended lamely, shoulders slumping. "My parents, they—they've seen how thin you've gotten before and have really been worried about you. It makes sense, okay? And it'll explain why you're cutting yourself off and using your own money to get by in the future."

It wasn't a lie that she would've needed to sort something out in the future for a story, but there was one glaring issue.

"I'm not eighteen," she pointed out. "Won't they have to report that I've run away?"

"You're legally eighteen in, like, two weeks!" he exclaimed. "You can just—they want you to hang out here for two weeks or until we need to go off to school. And you're riding with us to get all your stuff there."

She raised her eyebrows. "Am I, now?"

"How else you going to get it there?" Adrien retorted. "On the train? That'll be so _hot_."

"I don't have that much," she replied. "I can get it there easily."

"That's not the point," he answered back. "They're not going to drop this. I all but admitted your fake grandfather is a complete dick. There's no way they'll let you leave here for long."

As much as she'd come to realise that his parents cared about her, she didn't think it was that much. The only reason she'd negotiated for their lives to be saved was because it would've made Adrien sad, and yet, they were readily accepting her further into their home, opening up the spare room that she'd never been inside before.

It was very white.

The walls, the carpet, the bedding, and even the curtains were all white. There was a splash of colour in the form of a painting on the wall.

It felt suffocating.

There was the worry that she would make a mess. It seemed so perfect in comparison to the small room that she'd lived in for months, that tiny cramped space with the stained carpet becoming welcoming and somewhere she'd become accustomed to.

She hadn't stayed in a space as nice as the guest room since Chloé's.

And for the first time in a while, she felt uncomfortable with the attention that she received. There was pity there, obvious in the way they casually asked her if she was okay when she walked into the room, and it seemed that she didn't get any better at answering it as the days passed.

A few problems came up in the weeks that she stayed at Adrien's.

For one, she couldn't escape Alya and claim that she had something to do when she couldn't exactly sneak out at night when they came over. Adrien had invited Alya and Nino over in an attempt to lighten the mood and get his parents to stop hovering, but it only caused teasing comments and jokes to be directed their way.

Nino asked when they were getting married.

Adrien hit him in the face with a pillow.

Spending the late hours of the evening in Adrien's bedroom was normal, but when she had to cross the hallway to get back into her own bed, there wasn't a good reason for her to leave through his window and get her pent-up stress out by fighting when she didn't live somewhere else.

At first, she stayed with him, sometimes falling asleep in his bed before slipping into her own, other times with him nudging her awake and suggesting that they should separate before they were accused of being irresponsible.

The open bedroom door policy was still very much present.

It was usually his mother that came to peer in and check on them, pointedly leaving the door open wider each time.

Plagg started to sleep on her bed at night.

The problem that popped up was that Bridgette didn't know that she'd moved out of her home. They'd come to the decision for Marinette to come to her when she was free because it wasn't just weekends where she had time any more, but it had been over a week since she'd made a visit.

She didn't know how to say she wanted time alone.

As it turned out, she didn't need to.

It was Adrien's father that pulled her aside and said that she didn't need to feel pressured to stay cooped up in the house all day. He pointed out she was welcome to go out with Adrien or go separately and see her friends, as long as she sent them a text to say she was safe and when she was coming home.

And that was how she got his parents' numbers in her phone.

"I won't have signal up there," Marinette blurted, waving her hand with her phone as if to emphasise her point. "It's pointless for me to even take it."

"No signal," Adrien repeated with a frown. "Really?"

"It's literally a place for the dead," she retorted, rolling her eyes. "Why blur the lines and allow contact with the living? That's stupid."

He huffed. "You're stupid."

"You're stupider," she muttered, putting the phone in his hand. "Here, you pretend to be me if they text."

Adrien jumped. "Me?"

"Who else would I ask?"

"That's true," he said, drawing out the last vowel. "I'll do it for something in return."

She frowned. "Are you blackmailing me?"

"No, I'm making a deal," he clarified, tapping the end of her nose with his finger gently. "It's only fair I get something in return for impersonating you, yes? That sounds about right."

"You can't just answer yourself—"

"Now," Adrien said, raising his voice and cutting her off with a smile. "You're going to... phase? Was it phase? Saying teleport isn't offensive, is it?"

She snorted. "Phase."

"What's wrong with teleporting?" he questioned, tilting his head. "Same thing, isn't it?"

"No one's ever called it that," she replied. "We're old, remember? Pop culture's probably really behind up there. I mean, there might be some of the older generation that are suddenly speaking in slang. I'll ask Bridgette."

Adrien looked delighted in that. "Like old grannies?"

"Sure, I guess," she said with a shrug. "Whatever age they want to be, really. It's not a sudden shift like demons can do, but it's more of a—I like how I look right now so I'm going to keep it? There's no reversing it."

Slowly, he said, "There's a lot to unpack there."

She snapped her fingers. "Focus. What are you bribing me with?"

"What? No." He pulled a face. "You're the one bribing me here. I'm going to lie for you. That's a _sin_."

Marinette laughed. "You're full of sin anyway."

"I'm pure and innocent and you're bad to even suggest that," he accused, looking at her with narrowed eyes. "I'm raising the price for your cheek."

"Is it a bribe when you're the one deciding it?" she questioned, placing a hand on his chest and running her thumb across the fabric. "Blackmail is frowned upon, isn't it?"

"I think it's more than frowned upon," he corrected. Then, as she trailed her hand down until she dipped beneath his shirt, feeling his bare skin, Adrien jumped and took a surprised step back to create distance between them. "That's mean."

She laughed. "I don't know what you mean."

"You're teasing me," he retorted, placing his hand where she'd previously been touching his waist. "Aren't you supposed to be leaving? It's mean to do this then bail out to literally a different dimension."

With a grin, she replied, "I wouldn't say it's that—"

"Not my point!" he interrupted, clearing his throat afterwards. "You can repay me for my troubles when you're back later."

"Sure," she agreed with a laugh. "Don't forget I don't have any data on my phone."

He huffed. "I'm not going to use it!"

"You're not very trustworthy," she teased.

"Get out of here," Adrien retorted, crossing his arms. "I'm fed up with seeing your pretty face."

With a wide smile, she asked, "I'm pretty?"

Adrien's response to that was to turn around and ignore her.

She laughed when she phased away.

-x-

Adrien was upset that he couldn't see her wings.

"No?" she questioned, turning her head to peer at the grey wings that were resting on his bed.

"Stop teasing me," he complained, dramatically falling onto the beanbag and causing Plagg to be startled and run out of the room from the sudden noise. "You said you'd show me."

"They really are out," Marinette said, flexing her wings, making the duvet rustle from the movement.

"That—" Adrien pointed to the bed, wide-eyed. "Do that again?"

She flexed again, feeling awkwardly on the spot.

"Well, it just looks like you've got some shitty psychic powers or something," he said, thoughtfully tapping his chin with one finger. "I can see the duvet moving, but nothing's there."

All she could really say to that was, "Oh."

He squinted. "Did you really not know this would happen?"

"No," she confirmed, focusing on her wings instead of his expression. "We've—it's just been an accepted thing to hide our wings here, to blend in."

"What about when fighting?" he questioned. "Demons are fast and they can do some pretty... bizarre things. Like jump really high."

She shrugged. "It's never been a problem for me."

Adrien made a disapproving noise. "Bragging is unbecoming."

"Am I bragging?" she questioned, tilting her head and looking in his direction. "Or am I simply stating facts? I didn't practice all those years for no reason, you know."

"Okay, wear your murderer badge with honour," he said with a laugh, dimples showing on his cheek. "And keep your wings a dirty secret. I'll continue imagining them as leathery and gross."

Offended, she exclaimed, "_Gross_?"

He cooed, "As gross as how much I love you."

Instead of answering that, she fell onto his bed, burying her face in the duvet as her wings gone.

When it came time for her birthday, everything had been sorted out for university. Instead of Adrien living in a dorm, his parents had splurged and gotten him a nearby apartment when he was adamant that he wanted his cat with him. They'd questioned whether he'd really wanted to be away from the other students instead of living on campus, and it had only taken a few weeks for him to convince them.

He whispered smugly to her, "I'm spoiled."

There was no denying that.

Marinette got accepted to a dorm.

Neither of them were under any illusion that she'd be living there.

Adrien's parents were happy for her, offering once again to drive her with her belongings and help her to move in, and she couldn't exactly reject that when Adrien stubbornly said he was going to be there regardless, pointing out that extra help wouldn't be awful.

Adrien baked her another cake.

Alya and Nino were invited over for it, and, thankfully, there were still no party poppers involved. Marinette had a party hat shoved onto her head, the string digging into her chin, and she had a blank expression when she stared into the camera when it came for pictures.

It was only when Adrien kissed her cheek that she smiled, dropping the act.

Although she hadn't met up with anyone outside of her sister unless they dropped by Adrien's house, Marinette had made an effort to respond to texts more frequently. Alya wasn't someone she wanted to push away so soon, and the way they sat side-by-side on the floor while eating cake was welcome and a reminder that she didn't mind people in her personal space so much any more.

Well, certain people.

Nino hugged her tightly before they left for the evening.

"It's not your actual birthday, is it?" Adrien asked when they were alone, draped across his sofa with the laptop in front of them, playing a new show that neither of them was too keen on.

"No," she confirmed. "But we knew that already. It's not like I could remember the day I was born when I wasn't really born in the first place, right?"

He leaned against her, resting his head on her shoulder. "When's your actual one, then?"

"I have no idea," Marinette admitted in a whisper, cheek pressed against the top of his head. "It didn't really matter that much? Age has no meaning up there when no other generations are being born."

He poked her side. "Bragging again."

"Only for you." She laughed. "I'll keep this date. It's not too far off when I went missing, and my body really is around this age."

"Yeah, but you're literally the definition of an old soul."

She snorted. "That's what you say to depressed children."

"You used to always be sad," he pointed out.

"But now I've got you," she murmured.

"Yes," he agreed quietly, adjusting his head to be more comfortable against her, placing his arm loosely over her waist in a half-hearted hug. "But I can't cure everything, you know? And I'm pretty sure you still hate almost everyone. I haven't changed that."

With a wistful tone, she remarked, "Maybe that's my curse."

He sat up, confusion clear in his tone. "Eh?"

"For falling," she clarified, pulling her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. "There's always a curse, right? I used to care, I was—I was different, but now I couldn't care less if a human died because I didn't respond to their prayer."

"You care about me," he pointed out, bumping her shoulder with his gently. "If that was the case, you wouldn't be here right now. You would've—you wouldn't have saved my parents."

She swallowed the lump in her throat. "I guess you're right."

"I think it's more... you grew up here," Adrien quietly said, not looking away from her eyes. "You barely came down here before, right? Other than to answer calls for help. You hadn't... you didn't experience a life here, or how cruel people can be."

A laugh escaped her. "Are you trying to make excuses for me being so cruel?"

"You're not cruel," he said without hesitation, reaching out and taking ahold of one of her hands. "Marinette, you don't really believe that, do you?"

"Why don't you?" she countered, raising her eyebrows. "You know about the horrible things I've done."

He frowned. "For me."

"Some," she agreed with a slight nod. "But the others? I might've convinced myself that it was for you, but it wasn't. I... I like doing those things, you know? I like hurting people."

He swallowed. "That doesn't make you cruel."

"Doesn't it?" she queried, curious. "I'm the very thing you humans are scared of—an otherworldly being that has no qualms about hurting anyone."

Linking their fingers, he quietly pointed out, "You wouldn't hurt me."

"Because I love you," Marinette stated, not shy about that fact any more. There was nothing to be embarrassed about when she'd shaped the majority of her human life around him. "I never want to hurt you."

"Then, stop thinking you're a bad person," he murmured, lifting up their joined hands to press a kiss to her knuckles, lips curling into a sweet smile. "I can't hold you to human standards any more, right?"

Her shoulder shook with laughter. "You're using that against me now?"

"I love you," he declared, dramatically putting her hand on his chest where his heart was located. "Therefore, I'm allowed to tease you."

She tickled him.

Eighteen meant that she was viewed as a legal adult, but Adrien's parents all but begged her to stay with them because they were worried about her being outside on her own. And when she said that she had the money to afford a room until she had to go to her dorm for the year, the scandalised gasp that left Adrien's father was enough of a reaction to show they weren't happy with that idea either.

It was strange that they felt responsible for her.

And yet, she didn't say no.

For all the negative things she'd heard about Adrien's father over the years, she'd come to realise that he was overprotective. The way he'd stopped Adrien from walking to school in the morning, checking up on where he was and how long he'd be, had only made it easier for her in the long run, so she'd never disliked him much for it.

Since she'd started to regularly visit with his parents' knowledge, rather than slipping in through the window, it seemed that their relationship was less strained, too.

"They're nicer with you around," Adrien said as an explanation with a shrug of his shoulders.

His mother quietly told her that Adrien always looked so happy when she was there.

His father said it was nice to see him smile so much.

And from the weeks she spent living with him, the happy atmosphere in the house wasn't terribly overwhelming. His parents were all but doting on her and asking her about her day when she'd only spent it with Adrien in his bedroom, questioning what she'd liked for dinner, and paying her more attention than she was used to.

It wasn't only because they thought she was abused.

They were kind, she'd come to realise that.

She was happy they were alive.

It was the middle of September when they left.

With the plan of settling in a few days before classes started, Marinette didn't have much to pack in her bags. The pitiful amount of her belongings hadn't changed, though she did have access to the hot weather clothing that she used to wear before she fell. The problem was that she was more filled out and taller before, so it looked oversized when it wasn't supposed to.

Her old brassieres didn't fit, nor did the underwear.

A lot of it was brightly-coloured, too.

She didn't dress like that any more.

Marinette wasn't into flower prints, the soft pastel colours of the fabric, and the flowing dresses and short skirts didn't appeal to her. She liked the oversized shirts and sweaters that she wore, the ripped jeans and shorts that she'd gotten used to wearing, and the times Chloé had dressed her up were the only times she went out of her comfort zone.

She thought her friend would've appreciated her old wardrobe.

When she visited Bridgette, the most she did was take a few soft socks and steal a pair of black sandals from her sister's wardrobe that looked nice.

While she didn't have much packed that she couldn't carry herself, Adrien was a different matter. From everything he'd need in his kitchen to be stocked up, almost all of his clothing since his father fretted and didn't want him to run out of clothing while he was away, to everyday supplies that seemed endless that they insisted that he needed.

They had to take two cars.

Marinette was sat in the front seat beside Adrien's father, a pillow resting on her lap so it wouldn't get squished with everything else per Adrien's request.

She got a picture from Adrien's phone less than ten minutes into the drive of Plagg's carrier on his lap, Plagg looking unimpressed from the inside.

"We're the lucky ones," his father remarked when she'd told him what the picture was of. "That cat pees every time he goes in that carrier."

She laughed.

A few minutes later, that was confirmed.

It was decided that it would easier to go to Marinette's dorm first. There was less to unpack and she needed to check in with the security at the front to get in. There was an awkward moment where they pulled into the parking lot first, Adrien about five minutes behind them with his mother, so she sat there with his father in silence for a while.

Then, his father broke it to ask, "Would you like me to come in with you?"

There wasn't any easy way to say that she'd been a responsible adult for longer than he'd been alive.

So, she said yes.

She did the talking.

Adrien's father held her belongings, following along after her as they wandered up to the second floor to find which dorm she'd be in.

There were three other rooms beside hers.

She was the first to arrive.

Instead of packing everything away, Marinette took her bags and put them on the bed. She locked the door on the way out, putting her key in her pocket, and said, "I'll deal with it later."

Adrien's father insisted on looking at the shared kitchen first, turning his nose up at it.

It was clean, but that didn't mean it met his standards.

Adrien's apartment was a different story.

Although it had was only one bedroom, it was nice. It was what she estimated to be a fifteen minute walk from her dorm, on the opposite side to the university than where she was staying, and there was a clear difference between the two places.

For one, she doubted any other students would be staying in the same building.

Then again, Adrien had never flaunted his parents' money before. It was because of them indulging him that he wouldn't have to leave Plagg behind for the majority of the year.

His parents helped him unpack everything.

Their reasoning was that if they didn't, he'd keep it all in boxes and only get out what he needed.

Adrien eyed her pointedly at that.

Marinette grinned, not trying to deny it.

His parent were both teary-eyed when they left. To her surprise, she got a tight hug from the both of them, and his father put a hand on her shoulder and assured her that if she needed any help, she was welcome to call either of them.

Adrien's mother left with the words, "You'll look after Marinette, won't you?"

He pouted. "You're supposed to love me."

And when they left, instead of standing awkwardly in his new home and trying to get used to the unfamiliar space, the two of them had to try and coax Plagg out from behind the fridge for almost an hour.

He didn't like change.

Adrien was much the same.

He was on his hands and knees, peering awkwardly behind the fridge as he asked, "You'll stay, won't you?"

The summer heat hadn't completely faded, so she was laid on her back on the tiles, staring up at the white ceiling. "Me or the cat?"

"You, dingus," Adrien responded with a laugh. "Plagg's got no choice in the matter. He hates going outside."

She clicked her tongue. "Holding him hostage, are you?"

"Is it that bad when there's love involved?" he questioned playfully. "I'd do the same for you."

"You'd kidnap me?" Marinette questioned, amused. "That sounds really nice, actually. Keep me here forever."

"I'm fine with that," he said without hesitation, turning his head to look at her with a smile. "You've got to keep an eye on me somehow, right? Might as well stay here and make it easier on the both of us. I'd hate for you to have to sit in a tree all night to keep me safe."

She sat up abruptly. "I've never done that!"

He grinned. "Eh, I don't believe that."

"This is why Plagg's avoiding you," she told him, standing up and brushing any dirt off of her clothes. "You're mean. He loves me more than you."

Adrien snorted. "We both know that's not true."

She sniffed. "I can dream."

"I just don't want to be alone right now," he admitted, getting up, knees cracking. "This—it's really weird to be here? I'm pretty sure I'll start crying if you leave. The ugly kind."

"We can't be having that," Marinette replied. "Your looks are the only thing you've got going for you. Let's not ruin that so soon, yeah?"

He laughed loudly.

The food his parents had brought along had been the kind that could stay in the cupboard for months, spices and bottles of pastes, and barely anything that could be eaten for convenience. The push for him to eat somewhat healthy was still there.

They made the decision to leave to find a nearby store to get ingredients only after making sure Plagg's litter tray and bowls were near by where he was hiding.

He was out by the time they got back.

Plagg kept making noises at them, more fixated on being pet than hiding away from the unfamiliar place. When they were cooking, Marinette had jumped onto the counter to sit down, Plagg following her example and trying to sit on her lap. She had to hold onto him so he wouldn't fall off, though it got harder when Plagg wouldn't stop wiggling while he purred, trying to get comfortable.

Adrien got distracted from cooking by taking pictures of them.

"I'm hungry," she complained.

"You have to wait for perfection," he shot back, the sound of his phone taking another picture loud and obnoxious. "Like right now. I'll have to wait _forever_ for this to happen again."

She snorted. "The food will burn."

"A worthy sacrifice," he deadpanned.

It didn't burn.

When Adrien opened up a drawer in his bedroom searching for which clothes went where, Plagg ended up trying to sleep on them. And because Adrien was a pushover—as much as his parents were with him—he left it open and allowed Plagg to stay on his clean clothes.

He didn't look ashamed about it. "I have no self-control."

"That's true," she readily agreed.

It was strange being in an unfamiliar place.

Adrien said he felt the same.

She borrowed underwear from him to wear as shorts, as they'd found out trying to roll up the waistband of his trousers wasn't comfortable despite her gaining weight again, and she chose his most colourful t-shirt to make a point of not dressing all in black for once.

He clapped. "You're so colourful."

Marinette put her hands on her hips, posing. "For your eyes only."

He fanned his face with his hand. "You sure know how to woo me."

His new bed was comfortable.

But with his body beside her, it was too hot. Marinette kicked the duvet down to her legs, instead of rolling away from where she was pressed into his side, after only a few minutes of trying to sleep.

"Not tired?" he questioned, turning on his side to face her.

"Eh," was her response to that.

Adrien's was to clumsily reach out in the dark to touch her face before leaning in for an equally as clumsy kiss. Their noses touched unintentionally, his lips touching her chin at first before he found hers, and she just laughed, letting him fumble.

And he laughed right back, not offended in the slightest. His lips were soft against hers, breath warm, and she didn't hesitate to shuffle closer, her hand going to his chest and gently holding onto his shirt.

Her body felt hot from more than the weather.

Yet, she didn't pull away. She didn't kick Adrien away like he was the duvet; rather, she leaned into closer, placing her leg on top of his, smiling into the kiss when he made a startled noise from the sudden movement.

The kiss was lazy.

There was no urgency to it. It was slow, familiar in a way the room that they were in wasn't, and she was comforted by his closeness. There was nothing about him that she was unknown to her any more; she'd seen the moles across his body in various different settings, from the late evenings in his room to at the public pool where he'd stuck by her side, and the soft expression that was always reserved for her made her chest feel warm from affection.

And when she broke the kiss, glancing at his reddened lips that were entirely her doing, she closed her eyes before resting her forehead against his.

He kissed the end of her nose.

Marinette laughed, a breathy sound that wasn't surprising any more. There was something about him that brought out different sides of her; the gentle kind that she wouldn't have shown anyone else.

She'd never felt like she did with Adrien before.

The hazy memories of centuries of life paled in comparison to feeling loved and cared for, even when it was something as simple as a gentle brush of his fingertips against her skin. It was the way he looked at her in concern when she had a small bruise or looked upset that had her feelings for him continue to grow.

"I'd do anything for you," she murmured, ever-so-quietly. "You know that, right?"

"Yeah." There was no hesitation there, no pause where he had to think about his answer. Adrien had his arm loosely draped over her waist, touching the exposed skin where her shirt and bunched up. "You've proven that more than enough times."

She pressed a chaste kiss to his lips. "Good."

"I've never been in a fight before, so I probably couldn't kick anyone's ass," he started off, nudging her nose with his, close enough that she could feel his breath. "But I'd do the same for you—well, I'd try. There's not really much chance of me succeeding."

Her body shook with her laughter. "You don't have to fight anyone for me."

"I've got to fight for your honour, right?" Adrien replied, laughing with her. "How else am I going to prove to your sister that I deserve your hand in marriage?"

"You don't have to prove anything to anyone," she told him, smile reaching her eyes.

He made a thoughtful noise. "Oh, so we're eloping?"

"I think your parents might kill me if we do that," she teased. "I might as well be a part of your family now, right? Your father's already texted me to ask if I made it back to my dorm safely."

Adrien snorted. "I'm not having you as a sister."

"So mean." Marinette flopped onto her back, opening her eyes blearily and barely being able to see in the darkness. "This doesn't seem very loving any more."

"We're never going to bring up the thought of you as my sister again," he announced, pinching the skin of her side gently. "Especially not when we're in bed together. Are you trying to kill me?"

She poked his hand. "I'm the reason you're alive."

"I'm very thankful for that," he said, taking her hand and linking their fingers together, resting their joined hands on her stomach. "Let's not change that any time soon, yes? We're finally able to be alone without having to worry about anyone barging in."

"That's true," she agreed, turning her head to see his faint outline. There was no way to see his facial features, but she knew he was sure to be smiling at her. "We don't have to keep the door open now."

"You're right!" he exclaimed, sounding far too excited at that thought. "Oh—but we have to. I'm not having a litter tray in here."

Squeezing his hand, she remarked, "It's the thought that counts."

"The thought of being behind closed doors with you." He snickered. "You sure know how to get my heart pumping. That's such a scandalous thought, Marinette."

"You've done more scandalous things with me," she pointed out.

He hummed. "I have?"

"Yeah, murder."

He choked.

And then it was mixed with laughter, his gasped breaths coming out louder as he wheezed and tried to get over it. He'd sat up quickly, hitting his chest as he coughed, and Marinette did the same for his back in a way that he'd done to her in the past.

When he'd calmed down, his voice sounded hoarse, "You're a dick."

She laughed loudly.

Adrien had offered to walk her to her dorm before going back home, but then he quickly realised that she wasn't going to let him go out alone anywhere. While she hadn't sensed any demons in his apartment building, they were in an unfamiliar area.

She didn't know the hot spots, let alone if there were any demon-ran businesses nearby.

It was the unknown.

There was no Fu to help her as a fumbling child, no Chloé to introduce her to different parts of town and point out demons; she had only herself to rely on.

The next morning, Adrien came into her building with her.

She awkwardly met two of her three room-mates.

Adrien happily spoke to them, telling them their names and doing all the talking while Marinette looked around her room, deciding what to leave there.

He was more than happy for her to bring her belongings over and share with him.

The dorm was a front. If his parents ever came to visit, she'd have to come back and spend the night there, but she was never going to willingly go there herself.

She left with one backpack stuffed full of her belongings.

On their way back, Adrien told her that her room-mates had designated a cupboard and a shelf in the fridge for her belongings.

She'd never bought anything for cooking.

He grinned, nudging her with his elbow. "I've got enough for us both."

It worked out well.

-x-

Meeting Luka was awkward.

It was made even worse because she wasn't the one that initiated it.

Marinette had phased up, dressed in Adrien's t-shirt and her own shorts that she'd taken to sleeping in, pleased when she saw that her sister was home. They chatted, catching up without any barriers between them, and Bridgette was actually interested in hearing about her new classes and the new humans that she interacted with.

If anything, Bridgette seemed to be delighted with how unenthusiastic Marinette was about having to talk to anyone she didn't like.

"I have no interest in getting to know them," she muttered, taking a sip of her drink. It was a conversation in the past she'd had with Adrien before, and it hadn't taken him long to realise that she was telling the truth. "I literally don't care what happens to them. I hate small talk."

"Ridiculous," Bridgette said through her laughter. Then, she asked, "Have you grown?"

Marinette glared.

Bridgette held her hand sup in a sign of surrender. "I'll take that as a no."

"I'm pretty sure I'm stuck like this," she said, gesturing to her body that was several inches shorter than what it had been before. The moles and the freckles hadn't changed. "Everyone's going to assume I'm the younger sister now."

"Well, aren't you?" Bridgette questioned, titling her head, placing her hand thoughtfully on her chin.

"We were created at the same time," she corrected, putting her glass down with more force than necessary. "I have a higher kill count than you. Respect me."

Bridgette all but cackled. "Yours is higher than anyone's, let's be serious here."

"Yes, but now it's even more," she said with an air of smugness. "I did that even when I was human. I doubt many others could say the same."

"You had an angel weapon," her sister pointed out.

"Oh, I had more than that," she replied without fully thinking through that answer.

Bridgette blinked. "Eh?"

"Demon friend!" Marinette blurted, the feeling of the blade underneath her clothes unable to be ignored as she shifted awkwardly in her seat. "I had—help? Yeah. I mean, no one else is as fucking stupid as me to befriend a demon, right?"

Bridgette winced at her colourful language. "I wouldn't say you're stupid."

"I was best friends with the _enemy_," she said, uttering the last word sarcastically. "Did you know their bodies heal so fast they can't get drunk for more than a few seconds? It's hilarious to watch."

That wasn't something they would've ever known.

And so, with that invitation to talk about it, Bridgette had questions for her.

The reaction she got when she told Bridgette about Chloé ripping out her dirty nails to start over made her laugh until she had tears.

Bridgette stepped out to grab some ingredients from the town centre, slipping on her shoes before leaving, white wings visible from the window for a moment before she was off.

There was no reason to lock the door.

In all the weeks she'd been spending in her old home, no one had come to visit. Marinette didn't shy away from the windows, didn't try to stay out of view when Bridgette barely ever had visitors. It had been the same before; preferring to venture outside instead, so she wouldn't have to awkwardly get them to leave when she got bored.

Her sister hadn't changed much.

Bridgette was still kind, full of smiles, and ready to befriend anyone that she came across. The amount of angels had decreased greatly, but that hadn't killed her spirits.

Bridgette wasn't alone when she came back.

"So," her sister started as she came in the front door, fiddling with the ends of her hair while kicking off her shoes. "I might've... bumped into someone."

"Okay?" Marinette raised her eyebrows. "Is it a someone you hate? I'm absolutely up for you venting about why they're awful."

"Not exactly—"

And with the door wide open, Luka stepped into view, stiffly raising a hand in greeting. "Hi."

She didn't know what to say.

The laugh that came from Bridgette was entirely forced. "Funny, right? I mean, it's not like he just wouldn't take no for an answer and followed me back or anything. No, of course not. That would be absurd."

Of all the things they had in common, Bridgette was a terrible liar, too.

Luka was standing there awkwardly in the doorway, body language screaming that he was uncomfortable. He'd always been terrible at talking to others, often coming across rude from his quietness, and it had taken some time for her to realise that he wasn't good at expressing his emotions openly.

And yet, he'd spared Adrien.

Before he'd even recognised her, there had still been traces of her friend.

She let out a breath of amusement. "You coming in?"

Luka stared.

A beat of silence passed where Bridgette was looking between the two of them, opening her mouth and closing it before she said anything.

Then, Luka stepped inside, gently closing the door behind him. He kicked off his shoes in an action that was familiar, even if years had passed since the last time he'd come to visit, and he wandered across the room until he was standing in front of her.

She tilted her head to the empty space beside her, answering his silent question.

It awarded her a small smile.

Bridgette cleared her throat, still standing in the middle of the room away from them. "I'm just—I'll be in my room!"

There wasn't a chance to reply to that before she ran up the stairs, out of sight.

"She's happy," Luka said softly.

Marinette was looking at the empty stairs. "Is she?"

"It's why I stopped her," he said, picking at the rips on his jeans, surely making them worse. "She—it's really rare to see her that happy outside. So, I asked if she'd seen you."

"Oh," was her response to that.

Luka didn't say anything, focusing on his jeans instead, fiddling with the small strands of fabric.

If she hadn't been in pyjamas, she would've been doing the same thing with her jeans.

She blurted out louder than she intended, "I missed you."

Luka's hand stopped.

There wasn't any point prolonging it any further, was there?

Other than her sister, Luka had been her first real friend; someone to talk to for more than small talk, a class-mate that genuinely cared about what she had to say, her friend that encouraged her obsessive tendencies and had supported her crusade of violence when she answered each call that she could.

When others had laughed, saying that her self-appointed mission was pointless, he'd said otherwise.

He'd been kind to Adrien without knowing his importance to her.

Even if he'd become as cold to humans as the rest of the angels, he'd stood by her old stupid morals of wanting to help.

"I'm not the same as I was," Marinette said, pulling her knees up to her chest, hugging them and resting her chin on top. "I was... really fucking scared to see you, to be honest."

Luka remarked, "Oh, swearing."

She snorted. "Yeah, Bridgette's still horrified by it."

He pushed his hair out of his face, expression not giving away his emotions. "You look better than the last time I saw you."

"Yeah..." she trailed off, fidgeting and tucking some hair behind her ear. "I'd kind of just killed my best friend when you appeared. I wasn't exactly in the best—well, anything."

Luka averted his eyes, turning his head and staring back down at the rips on his thigh as he quietly asked, "Best friend?"

It took a moment for her to realise that he was upset.

His body language gave it away.

He was still cute.

She wanted to reach out, to pull him into a hug and make a teasing remark—

But hadn't she lost that privilege?

When she'd left, she hadn't said a good-bye to anyone. She'd gone about her day as any other, wandering out onto the outskirts of town to avoid anyone seeing her before she fell. She hadn't wanted someone to try and talk her out of it.

She'd spent years clueless that she'd hurt the people closest to her.

And while she found it hard to care about others, there was that overwhelming burst of affection she had for him again; just like when seen Bridgette for the first time, it _clicked_.

"There's a lot to tell you," she said, wetting her lips. "But I want you to know that I'm sorry for hurting you. I was selfish."

His hand clenched.

"Falling was a fucking stupid decision, but I don't regret it," she stated, not looking away from his face despite him avoiding eye contact. "If I told you about my plan, you wouldn't have let me do it."

The response she got wasn't what she'd expected.

Luka bit his lower lip. "I would've gone with you."

Startled, all she could say was, "Luka—"

And if if to prove that further, he looked her in the eyes as he insisted, "I would've, if you asked me."

"I'd never ask you to do that," Marinette replied, wide-eyed and unsure whether to feel horrified that she could've influenced him to do such a thing or not. "It—that's not a life I'd want you to live through."

His lower lip was trembling. "But it's fine for you?"

"It was fucking awful," she shot back. "But it was... enlightening."

With a frown, he questioned, "What did you learn?"

"For one, I hate humanity," she happily stated with a smile. "Other than a select few, I couldn't care less about what happens to them. Why not let the demons run wild a bit? It would spice it up down there."

His expression could only be described as terribly confused.

"Well, maybe not let them go that mad," she corrected, thoughtful. "It might go to their heads, I guess."

Luka's brow was furrow as he asked in disbelief, "You... hate humans?"

"I'm bitter and old now," she explained away with a dismissive wave of her hand. "You've seen the only one I really care about, and you spared him."

Slowly, Luka replied with a simple, "...Yes."

"Why?" she questioned, curious. "Not that I'm not thankful. If you hadn't, I would've stabbed you already for revenge."

He blinked.

She prompted, "Why didn't you kill him?"

"It's boring." Luka shifted, clasping his hands between his legs and leaning forward, elbows resting on his parted thighs. "That—I don't get anything from it? Killing means I have to clean up afterwards."

With a laugh, she remarked, "Laziness, then."

"I guess," he muttered, closing his eyes. "And I don't think there's any point in killing anyone pure any more? We don't allow entrance any more, regardless of how they lived their life, so why should I waste my energy to end their life prematurely? Someone else is bound to do it for me."

It was almost refreshing to hear someone else talk about murder to off-handedly. "I'm still hearing laziness."

With amusement clear in his tone, he copied her to say, "I'm bitter and old."

Marinette laughed loudly.

That evening, she stayed until it was dark outside and her eyes were starting to droop. Bridgette had eventually caved and come down to join them, trying to be quiet as she came down to stairs, peering over the banister to see whether the atmosphere was awkward between them.

Luka stayed for dinner.

And from how he interacted with Bridgette, it was clear that they'd spent more than a little time together while she was gone. He was quiet as always, yes, but he joked with her sister, smiles reaching his eyes, and Marinette lingered in the doorway just to watch the two of them talk, only a feeling of fondness apparent as she looked at them.

There was no festering jealousy from being left out.

She didn't deserve to feel that way, after all.

Luka hugged her tightly before she left.

She returned the gesture, squeezing until he wheezed, burying her head in his chest to try and muffle her laughter.

It was only when she'd seen him again that how much she'd missed him had really struck.

"You're coming back, right?" Luka questioned, not pulling away from their hug.

"Yeah," she murmured. "I'll come back when I can. The times probably won't be the same because I have... human responsibilities."

He quietly asked, "You remember my place, right?"

"Yes," she confirmed, faintly remembering what it looked like. The most prominent memory was of his bedroom. "You going to ask me to phase into your bedroom, are you? That's scandalous."

He flicked the end of her nose. "We both know you're going to do it."

Marinette slapped his hand away, stepping out of his embrace. "Yes, yes. As you wish, master."

"Don't be a stranger," he whispered, voice thick with emotion. "Please."

She swallowed. "I won't."

When she phased back into Adrien's new bedroom, she landed on the bed with a noise of surprise, Adrien's elbow jabbing her in the side from where she'd appeared on top of him.

They burst out into laughter.

Marinette rolled off of him, not getting far before he pulled her into a hug, her back against his front, his arms wrapping around her waist immediately as he pressed his nose into her hair.

"Did you just sniff me?" she asked, incredulous.

"You always smell nice," he said as an explanation, purposely sniffing loudly so she could hear. "And I miss you. Let me have this."

She didn't put up any resistance to his embrace. "I missed you, too."

And when he started to smother her with kisses, she laughed until the sounds escaping her were entirely breathless.

She really, really loved him.

-x-

University went the same as their last school. Adrien was friendly with anyone he met, talking for the two of them, never leaving her side and passing up any offers to hang out if they didn't include her.

Marinette didn't feel comfortable enough to walk to the campus library and leave him in an unfamiliar place when they barely knew the city as it was, and the lack of a tell-tale sense of a demon being nearby wasn't enough to calm her.

He wasn't troubled by it.

Instead, he swung their linked hands together as they walked to their next class, insisting, "I don't mind, really. I'd rather spend time with you any day."

Her face felt hot. "Yeah?"

"Oh, absolutely," Adrien confirmed, dimples showing on his cheeks. "Why wouldn't I want to spend time with my hot girlfriend? I'm the lucky one here."

She jabbed him in the side with her elbow.

He laughed loudly.

There was no worry that he'd think she was being overbearing. Adrien was well aware of why she was as paranoid as she was; it was warranted, after all, and he was only breathing because of her involvement over the years. He was more than happy to bring up the application on his phone that tracked where he was to make sure it was still working, had been meticulous about telling her where he was going after the cake incident, and since living together, he didn't go outside without her.

When he pointed out how that kind of relationship could be viewed as unhealthy to others, he teased, "I can't hold you to human standards, right?"

It was true.

And Marinette—

She visited Bridgette and Luka, either together or separately, enjoying the link to her past that she couldn't quite get rid of. Neither of them were something that she wanted to give up after only just getting them back, and their bewildered responses to when she described her time on the surface were always so amusing.

While she was gone, Adrien always stayed in the apartment, playing online games on his laptop. He'd managed to convince Alya to play with him, the two using microphones to talk, and Marinette sometimes wandered in to talk for a bit before leaving the room.

Her old laptop was still holding up.

It was okay for Adrien to do something without her when it meant that he was safe.

The first time she'd killed a demon in their new city, it had been months since she'd killed her last. There was something thrilling about the surprise in their eyes as she slashed their ankles, impaling their chest with her sword before jerking it down, hitting the other heart in the process and eliminating them in a matter of seconds.

She wiped the blood from her face with her palm, looking down at the puddle that had been left behind.

Adrien was in the store beside her.

He'd followed along with her plan without any doubts, trusting her without question.

He wasn't as scared as he used to be.

Before, he'd been shorter, almost her height, wide-eyed and innocent of what the world had in store for him, but he'd grown into someone that allowed his life to be in her hands with a smile. Adrien loved her for all her faults.

And as she wiped her bloody sword on her hoodie before sheathing it, she knew that her want for violence wasn't normal.

Then again, there wasn't much of her that was, was there?

It hadn't been fun when the fight ended in seconds.

She wondered whether it would've been better to let out her wings, to see the startled reaction when the demon realised that they were alone. An angel would always inspire more fear than a frail-looking human, after all.

The doors of the store opened automatically as she walked inside, looking around to spot him.

Adrien smiled, waving excitedly as he all but ran across the store, clutching a plastic bag in his other hand, pulling her into a one-armed embrace that almost left her breathless.

The fight hadn't caused that to happen to her.

There had been a time where she'd gone out every night to kill demons; to get her violence out and feel better that she was quelling the stronger demons out of the city, but she'd traded that away for her life of living with Adrien, staying by his side and acting mostly human.

So why wasn't it enough?

When he smiled at her and held her close, she felt cherished, but it didn't solve all of her problems.

For both of her lives, she'd grown up with violence.

She could vaguely remember the lessons she'd taken with others from her generation; the build-up to being allowed her own weapon—

The best way to describe how she felt was restless.

At Adrien's apartment, she played with Plagg, throwing a toy mouse and watching as he ran to get it, following after him to throw it again while Adrien was busy with making dinner.

She didn't try and hide her frown.

Adrien knew her moods by then. "What's wrong?"

"I'm bored," she muttered, tossing the mouse again, watching as Plagg jumped up to try and catch it.

"Rude," he replied, making a disapproving noise. "You'll make him self-conscious if you call him boring."

"Not with this," she denied, sitting upright and stretching her arms above her head until her back clicked. "It's just—we've been here for... almost two months?"

"We have," he agreed, opening up a drawer to get out bowls for the two of them. "Homesick?"

She sighed, pushing her hair out of her face. "It's not that. I think I'm... I'm too used to fighting, you know? But that's dwindled down the past few months. I miss it, I think."

Thoughtfully, he asked, "A peaceful life isn't for you, then?"

"Maybe not," Marinette said, remembering how bored she'd grown in Heaven between calls. "But it—I enjoyed it. I liked it when Chloé was there, but I messed that up."

Adrien was quick to correct, "I did, not you."

"I don't blame you," she answered back, refusing to let him be upset for her. "I made the choice, didn't I? You didn't do anything."

After clearing his throat, he quietly said, "You know you can—you can go out at night, like you used to, right?"

She frowned. "And leave you?"

"Does that really matter?" he replied, tilting his head. "We're safe here, right? You haven't sensed any demons in the building. You trusted me to stay at home for years, so what's the difference now?"

Marinette averted her eyes, staring down at Plagg gnawing on the toy as she quietly replied, "The difference is I know what's waiting for you now."

He wasn't one to let the subject drop. "What do you mean?"

"There's nothing but suffering waiting for you when you die," she told him, running her fingers through Plagg's fur, not flinching when he turned over and started to gnaw on her wrist. He couldn't pierce her skin. "I don't know if it's endless or not, but that—you don't deserve that. I'm not going to let it happen."

"It's unavoidable," Adrien said, turning off the stove and coming to kneel beside her, putting a hand on her chin and moving her head so she had to look at him. "What makes me different from anyone else? I'll be there with everyone I love when they die, right?"

She swallowed the lump in her throat. "I won't be there."

His brow furrowed. "You... won't?"

"The afterlife's for humans," she pointed out, raising her hand to rest of top of his, letting his cup her cheek as she leaned into his touch. "It would be cruel to make us live longer when we've been alive for centuries, don't you think?"

There was a sad understanding in his expression. "And no one gets into Heaven."

She nodded. "It hasn't changed."

Adrien's smile didn't reach his eyes. "I appreciate everything you do for me, you know that, right?"

"I might," she coyly replied.

"But you're allowed to have your own life, too," he said quietly, thumb gently stroking her cheek. "I want you to be happy, remember?"

"Stupid," she scolded, fondness clear in her tone. "You're my life here."

"There's more to life than me," Adrien answered back, kissing the tip of her nose. "You've just gotten your sister back. Don't you want to spend more time with her?"

She scoffed. "I've spent eternity with her."

He grinned. "So, it's my turn?"

"Yes," she confirmed, pressing a chaste kiss to his lips. "I'm not leaving you, okay? Even if you grow bored of me, I'll still be here to watch over you."

Adrien breathed out audibly. "I'd never get tired of you."

"You might," she said, smile not quite reaching her eyes.

"It's not happening," he denied, cutting her off from replying to that by kissing her until she'd forgotten what she'd wanted to say in the first place. And when he pulled away, lips reddened because of her, he murmured, "I love you, idiot."

Her chest felt warm with affection.

"I don't care that I'm not getting into Heaven," he declared, not shying away from her gaze. "Spending time with you here is enough for me."

She didn't dislike him in the slightest.

"You're such a fool," she accused, no heat to her words. "Truly."

Adrien beamed. "For you."

Letting her head fall down to his shoulder, Marinette closed her eyes as she confessed in a whisper, "I don't want to live without you."

"I'm not going anywhere," he told her, wrapping his arms around her waist in an embrace. "Not willingly, at least."

She snorted. "Going to stomp your feet and throw a tantrum when you're in trouble?"

"Absolutely," he replied, amused. "Maybe they'll think twice about killing me if I'm a brat."

"I'm sure they'll be speechless," she muttered.

"Maybe there's some kind of rule that you're unaware of," he joked. "What if I catch them off-guard and blurt out something so stupid they hesitate? I think making them laugh should let me off the hook, whether it's an angel or a demon."

"I'm sorry to tell you this," she started, breath against his neck as she spoke. "But you're really not funny. You'll be killed before you can close your stupid mouth."

He sniffed. "Wrong."

"I don't make the rules," Marinette stated, trying not to laugh. "Unfunny people have to die."

Adrien laughed at that, getting her to burst out and join in with him, both of their bodies shaking in their hug from amusement. Then, his voice was breathless as he pointed out, "Except—you did make the rules, didn't you?"

She shrugged. "I had a say in them."

"So..." Adrien trailed off.

"So?"

"Why not get it back?" he questioned, hesitance obvious from how slow he got the sentence out. "You—outside of being an archangel, you had a reputation for being the strongest, yes?"

She said, "I did."

He asked quietly, "Why didn't they listen to you more?"

"Because I was stupid," she bluntly replied. "I was asking for too much. And now... if someone else proposed what I used to, I would laugh at them. Why should we devote so much time to humans when they don't give anything back? It's not a fair relationship."

He pressed a kiss into her hair. "What do you want now?"

"I want to be with you," Marinette said without hesitation. "Isn't that obvious?"

He hugged her tighter. "You're too good to me."

"I'm not good enough," she retorted, kissing his neck. "You deserve all the happiness."

It had been a passing moment for them, whispered words of affection that had become more common with the intensity of their relationship increasing, and yet, she couldn't get them out of her mind.

Marinette wasn't naïve even more.

She wasn't going to fight to try and protect human's lives, to say that they deserved to live without a demon cutting it short because they'd been evicted from Hell, not when she'd realised how pointless all of that was.

But she'd killed more demons than any of them must've in the close to two decades that she'd been missing. Marinette had done the almost impossible and regained her wings, unlocked the memories from violence and slaughtering enough demons to be forgiven for her sin of abandoning her kind.

Without the weapons she'd gotten from Aloys, she'd been the strongest despite being the youngest generation. She'd risen to the top from stubbornness, and she was sure to return there if she wanted.

She'd been fighting for the wrong cause before.

Luka was sceptical.

"You want to... what?" he questioned, his arms crossed over his chest, doubt clear in his voice.

Almost all of his home had changed after his sister had moved out. There wasn't anyone to influence his décor into something more colourful, and a lot of the home reflected her dull human wardrobe.

They were dressed startlingly alike.

"I want exception for the humans," she said, sitting with her legs crossed, showing the rips of her jeans that matched his almost exactly. Their sense of style had never matched so much before. "It's not like anyone's forgotten who I am, right?"

"Marinette," he drawled out slowly, incredulous. "You're dead."

She patted her chest. "I don't feel dead."

"Everyone else thinks you _died_," he said, stressing the last word. "You can't just waltz into the town centre and demand entrance for the human you're infatuated with."

"I'm in love, not infatuated," she corrected. "Don't belittle my feelings like that."

Luka deadpanned, "You're not going to win over the council with the power of love."

She wasn't put off. "I'll fight them."

"What."

It wasn't a question.

"I'll fight them," Marinette repeated, determined. "They can say no when I kick all of their asses, right? I mean, they were fucking cowards to begin with, but now I'm got even more of an advantage. Or I could kill them, I guess."

"...What," he repeated.

"There's nothing a bit of violence can't solve, am I right?" she remarked, smiling widely and proud of her plan. And when she saw that Luka's expression hadn't changed from disbelief, she asked, "What don't you agree with, then? It sounds solid to me."

"_Solid_?"

"Slang," she explained with a roll of her eyes. "Come on, dude. If I'm going back, it'll be with a bang that they can't deny. Might as well dominate the hierarchy from the get-go."

"Have you hurt your head?" he demanded, reaching out and putting his hands on her shoulders roughly. "Nothing comes from fighting here—we don't do it."

She snorted. "Now's a good time to start."

"Marinette," he all but hissed, his facial features twisted in incredulity. "Are you forgetting that we can't physically hurt each other? You're not going to get anywhere with this plan. Just—you can try and petition for it with _words_, but it won't be successful."

"That's stupid—"

"It's what you did in the past," he shot back, talking louder and faster than he usually would've. "It's how we solve things here, remember?"

"Exactly." She snapped her fingers, grinning with excitement despite his rejection. "It never got anything done, did it? We're wasting away here from boredom because of it."

He spluttered, "We have a council for a reason!"

"Because we got abandoned," she pointed out, reaching up and taking his hands into hers, allowing her shoulders to not be grasped tightly any more. "Where's the sense in ruling if we're unhappy here? I fell because this place was so fucking depressing, Luka. The surface wasn't any better."

Luka wrinkled his nose. "And—what? You'll think it'll be better with your human up here?"

"I don't want him to suffer," she corrected, linking their fingers together on both hands. "He saved my life, Luka. It's only a matter of time before he's killed because of how he's born, and I'll do anything to make it so he doesn't have to be in pain in the afterlife because of it."

With a sigh, he started to say, "Marinette—"

"Fuck everyone else," she interrupted, spitting out the words in distaste. "I'm not asking to save the whole fucking world again. I just—it's one person. After everything I've done for us, isn't—isn't it only fair that I get something in return?"

"No one gets in," he quietly reminded her.

She let go of his hands, smile reaching her eyes. "And I'm going to change that."

He squinted. "I don't know whether to call you arrogant or not."

"Ambitious, maybe," she remarked.

"Or idiotic," he muttered.

-x-

Bridgette was as supportive as she'd expected.

"Are you an idiot?" her sister snapped.

She threw her hands up in exasperation. "Come on, it's a good plan!"

"When Luka said you had a stupid idea, I didn't think it would be _this_ bad!" Bridgette exclaimed in disbelief. "You can't—that's so dumb. Have you got any brain cells left?"

"How much time are you two even spending together?" she accused, outraged. "You're starting to sound the same, it's weird!"

"We care about you!" Bridgette retorted, pushing her hair away from her face. "And clearly for good reason if you think you can get your way from using your fists. You do know this is a bad idea, don't you? Everyone thinks you're dead and you want to punch them to get your way?"

She huffed, feeling defensive. "No one's ever tried this tactic before."

"Because it's _ridiculous_!"

Raising her head, refusing to back down, Marinette stated, "Adrien said it's not."

Bridgette stared. "...What."

"He believes in me, unlike you two," she said, crossing her arms.

"I believe you're out of your mind," Bridgette remarked, letting out a sigh. "A human says it's a good idea and you _believe_ him?"

"He knows me better than anyone," Marinette pointed out. "I'm stubborn. I'm going to get what I want eventually."

Bridgette frowned. "Than anyone?"

"New life, remember?" she replied, using one hand to pat over where her heart was. "I've done things you can't even imagine. I've slummed it with the humans and learned a few things."

Bridgette wrinkled her nose. "That sounds like you're bragging about being trashy."

Marinette raised her middle finger.

Her sister let out a scandalised gasp that wasn't forced in the slightest.

She cackled.

Luka continued to call her an idiot, too.

And while she sat there and took their scepticism with a smile, amused that they thought that she really wasn't capable of that sort of brutality, it made her realise that they were still trying to treat her the same way as before. As though she was still the kind-hearted angel that only used violence on demons, the one that had trouble chatting further than small talk and only really connected on one-on-one settings instead of being in a crowd.

They might've heard the stories, but they hadn't seen it in person.

Luka had appeared at her lowest moment, before she spiralled in depression and her muscles had lessened as her body grew gaunt again, but he hadn't been there to witness it.

Adrien had.

"They don't know about your sword," Adrien reminded her. "Why not tell them?"

"And reveal my trump card?" she shot back, shaking her head at the thought. "I need the surprise if I'm going to do something drastic. As much as I trust them, Bridgette's not good with too many secrets."

His brow furrowed. "She's kept you a secret."

"Yeah, right until Luka asked her outright," she said, letting out a breath of amusement. "He saw through her in an instant."

"As bad as lying as you?" he enquired.

She sniffed. "Perhaps."

He patted her back. "That's bad, then."

There was no point denying it.

When Alya and Nino called them at the weekend, their faces taking up Adrien's entire screen as they tried to both get in frame, it was normal to ask whether Marinette had anything else happen to her.

She waved a hand. "No, I'm on a break right now."

Nino laughed. "Retiring already?"

"I need to rest my weary body," she replied, grinning.

"Here's hoping you don't lose it all because you haven't worked out in a while," Alya mused. "That would suck. That's not a thing, right?"

"It's not," she assured her. "The changes are permanent. You'll never know that Adrien kicks me in his sleep."

He squawked, "I do _not_!"

Marinette cupped a hand around her mouth, whispering, "He really does."

She ducked when a pillow was thrown at her.

The friends she'd acquired were ones she'd never thought she'd have. It was because of Alya's help that she'd figured out how to summon angels before recovering her memories, and although she wasn't going to reveal her past to either Alya or Nino, she was grateful for them trusting her so.

They hadn't shut her out after realising she wasn't entirely human any more.

She wasn't sure she'd be able to repay them, but Adrien was her main priority.

That wasn't going to change.

For as supportive as he was, he was still wary when they walked across the city, further away from the campus and his apartment building. Marinette had pointed out that it was smarter for it to happen away from where they lived, less likely to be tracked back to them if the angel returned to the location afterwards, so he was the one to suggest taking the bus.

He paid before she had the chance to.

She didn't put up a fight about it.

Adrien was generous with his money. She'd barely had to dip into her stash—that hadn't been replenished properly for some months—and he had more than enough for the both of them in his monthly allowance from his parents. The money was building up in his account, according to him, and he saw no reason to spend it on her when he was in a good financial position compared to her.

It was sweet of him.

Before they'd left, he'd asked, "Would it help if I changed my appearance?"

There wasn't any point to it when it was his aura that gave him away.

The weekend before, he'd bleached and toned her hair without the presence of his mother. He'd done a good job, only missing one patch at the back that was in the middle, hidden by the rest of her hair.

The hair wasn't something she was going to change any time soon.

She didn't look like the old Marinette; wasn't dressed in soft colours with her long hair that matched her sister. Instead, she was in an oversized t-shirt she'd tucked the front into her ripped jeans, her grey-coloured hair pulled into a ponytail that could finally reach the crown of her head.

The fringe she kept.

Bridgette was a fan of that much, at least.

She kept fiddling with the rip in her jeans as the bus continued to move.

Adrien took her hand in his, his thumb tracing faint patterns into her skin.

It was comforting.

When they got off, the first potential location was a bust when she sensed a demon nearby. It was luck that she dragged Adrien in the opposite direction of where they were without knowing it, skipping out from committing a murder when Adrien was right beside her.

Adrien pointed out a parking lot that was besides a building with wood over the windows. The fence was tall, blocking most of it from view other than the entrance to go in, and it seemed like a good location from the lack of cameras.

"So," Adrien started, pulling the sleeves of his jacket over his hands. "What exactly am I supposed to do again?"

"Think that a demon's going to kill you," she suggested, stretching out her leg as though they were in gym class. "Try and sound panicked? You're the one's that good at acting between us."

"Right," he muttered, closing his eyes, brow furrowing as he was clearly trying to think deeply. "I—this is all I have to do, right?"

Marinette stretched her arms over her head. "You did it before."

"By accident," he pointed out. "I never meant for anything to happen. I never—I didn't make it happen before all those times I was scared for you, but it worked that time."

"Eh." She shrugged. "Maybe you did and no one answered. We're here for the long run until someone actually listens and comes down."

Adrien asked, "And if it's Luka?"

"I'll kick him back up there," she said without hesitation.

"That's a weird thought," he mused. "It's not just me that you bully?"

"You're supposed to be thinking!"

He pouted. "I have a bad attention span."

Marinette snapped her fingers in front of his face. "Focus, I need to be intimidating."

Adrien snorted. "You don't look scary with your jumper hanging off one shoulder."

"I'm clearly going for the delinquent look," she replied, trying to adjust her clothing. It was too big to be on both shoulders at once, so it slipped down pathetically and showed the strap of her brassiere. "Don't reply to that. You're supposed to be thinking."

He stuck his tongue out.

Rather than using her angel-made bandalore that had been out of use since generations before her own, she pulled the blade out from underneath her clothes, adjusting her grip on the handle as she stood beside him.

Angels always appeared in front, taking the information of the prayer and appearing where the caller was looking.

It took almost an hour for anyone to appear.

Adrien had sat down, knees pulled to his chest as he rested against the fence, staring blankly at her as he continued to try and make an angel appear. At times, his expressions would change, as though he was scared or surprised, utterly faked and not looking sincere in the slightest, and it made her wonder how awful her own expressions had to be when she was lying if he was considered better than her.

She'd continued stretched, opting to stay active and alert.

It didn't work out in her favour.

Well, that wasn't quite right.

When someone materialised in front of them, a split second change where a body appeared in an instant, Marinette was startled and did the first thing she could think of.

She thrust the sword through their chest on instinct.

Then, as they yelped in pain, Marinette pushed them until they fell back onto the floor, pressing her forearm harshly into their despite the fact that she wouldn't be able to to choke an angel. The sword was still embedded in their chest, and they were face-to-face from the close distance.

It wasn't a face that she could remember the name of.

A girl, blonde-haired and gasping in pain, shock written across their expression. "Wh—"

"Shut up," Marinette demanded, adjusting the blade to jerk up slightly, causing more blood to well out. She hadn't pierced the heart, but she wasn't sure on how severe an injury would result in death. "You're going to listen to me unless you want to die, got it?"

Wide-eyed, the angel below her squirmed.

"Now—" Marinette started, cutting herself off with a disgruntled noise when she felt a jab in her side.

She looked down to see that the girl had tried to pierce her side with her own sword, slicing through her shirt in the process.

"You can fucking feel me already, can't you?" she snapped, removing the arm from the angel's throat to toss the sword away, using the distraction of twisting her own blade a little to get the action done without resistance. "What's your name?"

The angel coughed out, "R-Rose."

"Great, nice to meet you and all that," Marinette said, feeling an odd sort of thrill that Rose hadn't phased away, not wanting to risk the injury being worsened from movement. "You know Bridgette, don't you?"

There was blood on Rose's lip. "Bridgette?"

She jerked the blade up slightly. "Yes or no."

The pained noise that escaped Rose didn't make her flinch. It wasn't anything compared to all the other things she'd done in the past—why would it matter that it was finally one of her kind that she'd done it to?

When she was human, she'd hurt others.

She'd killed before.

"I-I know her!" Rose choked out, hands weakly trying to push her away.

There was no demon strength to look out for. Rose wouldn't have been able to shatter her bones even when she was human.

And as she watched the angel beneath her shake from pain, blood steadily coming from the wound and staining her clothing, Marinette asked in a whisper, "Do you not recognise me, Rose?"

Rose was holding back tears. "No!"

She didn't feel bad in the slightest.

If Rose was that weak that she'd be caught off-guard and slammed down within seconds of phasing down to the surface, how could she expect to succeed if there were multiple demons there?

"No?" she questioned, wrapping her hand tightly around Rose's throat, jerking her to look directly into her eyes. "What if I do this?"

Her wings came out smoothly, barely causing her clothing to move.

Rose's expression was priceless.

She dug her nails into her throat, not caring that it didn't do anything. "I didn't die."

Rose tried to shove her away, but that stopped as soon as Marinette jerked the blade slightly in warning.

"Why—why are you doing this?" Rose asked in a sob.

"I want you to relay a message for me," she said, leaning back until she was sitting upright, tilting the blade until it matched her posture. "You see this human beside me?"

And although Rose had felt him the entire time she'd been down on the surface, there was still surprise on her expression as she turned her head to see Adrien standing behind the two of them. Marinette had no idea whether he was watching or turned away from the gruesome scene. It was enough that he hadn't interrupted or tried to get her to stop.

"If anyone touches him, I'll kill them," she stated without hesitation, twisting the blade into Rose's chest for emphasis. "Make sure they know, yeah?"

Rose coughed up more blood instead of replying.

With a sigh, Marinette stood up, unceremoniously ripping the blade out of her chest in the process, flicking to get the blood to splatter on the floor. She didn't feel any sympathy for the crumpled angel before her, not even when she had faint memories of the two of them being class-mates and learning alongside each other.

They'd never been friends.

Rose phased away without another word.

The blood was the proof that anyone had been there at all.

She placed her sword away.

Adrien made a strangled noise, and before she could even turn around, his arms were around her waist and pulling her into a hug, her back against his chest. "You _stabbed_ her!"

Lamely, she replied, "I panicked."

"You said you were going to talk," he rushed out, burying his nose in her hair. "You didn't—this wasn't a part of the plan."

"It kind of was," she admitted quietly. "I just—I thought you'd be against it, so I didn't say anything. I'm not going to get anything done by just talking, am I?"

"A bit of warning would've been nice." He sighed. "I thought I was going to have a heart attack when she tried to stab you. That was so scary."

She quipped, "Good thing I'm angel proof, eh?"

Adrien squeezed her tightly. If she'd been human, she would've lost her breath. "Now is not the time for jokes. I'm emotionally traumatised now."

"You've seen me do worse," she pointed out.

"I wasn't an accomplice then!" he exclaimed.

"You kind of were?" she mused. "You killed a demon, remember?"

He rebutted that with, "That was a nightmare we don't talk about."

"Okay, it was all in your imagination," she agreed with a smile, looking down at the puddle of the parking lot. Some of the blood had splattered on her from her close proximity to the wound. "But can we agree you're not dreaming right now and Rose kind of left her sword behind?"

Adrien peered over her to softly say, "That's... not good."

"It is," she replied, wiggling out of his embrace to pick up the forgotten sword, the weight in her hands heavy and familiar. It wasn't as comfortable as her current one, but there was something nostalgic about holding one from her past again, even if it wasn't hers. "I've got proof of it happening now, right?"

He told her, "You're scary."

Marinette turned back to wink at him. "I'll take that as a compliment."

And it was when he got his phone out of his pocket that he stated, "Marinette, there's no buses running this late."

"I'll pay for a ride, then," she said without hesitation. "I should pay to try and make up for your troubles, yes?"

He snorted. "You should be paying for my therapy."

"A few years ago and you would've broken down crying at what I just did," she pointed out as he got up the application on his phone. "It's great that you're desensitised now, don't you think?"

"I'm crying on the inside," he deadpanned.

Marinette laughed.

While Adrien had come to accept her ways, despite not agreeing with them completely and acknowledging it was all something he would never do himself, she'd predicted that no one else would have the same reaction as him.

The only reason she didn't have to face that without her being the one to initiate it was because Bridgette and Luka had no idea where she lived.

She was going to keep it that way.

Adrien wasn't shaken up by what had happened, but he made her promise to tell him what she planned to do in the future.

"Not summon another," she said to that, thoughtfully pushing her hair away from her face. "If Rose did what I asked, no one's going to risk answering another call for a while, don't you think?"

He wasn't so sure.

"You don't have to do all this," he quietly told her, placing one of his legs between her as they were on his bed together. "I'm okay with any time I get with you, you know that, right? Getting into Heaven isn't a big deal."

"I'm not losing anything from trying," Marinette reminded him, bumping his nose gently with hers. "It's kind of fun."

"Tormenting your old friends is fun?" he questioned, doubtful.

She snorted. "They weren't my friends."

"But from what you told me, you were a sunshine child compared to right now," he remarked. "Why wouldn't anyone want to be your friend?"

"I'm awkward," she pointed out. "I always have been. I might've been friendly but I didn't know how to carry on conversations most of the time."

He hummed. "You're good at talking now."

"Yeah, and you talk to much," she teased, wrapping her arms around his neck, pulling him closer.

And as Adrien kissed her soft and slow, making her feel cherished and utterly loved in that moment, she didn't regret any of her choices.

It was over a week later when she decided to face the inevitable disapproving reactions.

When she phased into the living room, Bridgette was there, sipping from her mug and reading a book while curled up on the sofa. The novel was resting on her legs, almost falling off as she tried to balance it while drinking, and Marinette couldn't help but laugh when it really did fall onto the floor.

Bridgette was startled, sitting upright and whipping her head around. Then, as soon as she recognised who was there, she threw her mug.

Marinette managed to step to the side.

The mug shattered against the wall, the contents splattered across the floor. Some had gotten onto her legs, but it wasn't a lot.

Sheepishly, Marinette raised her hand in greeting. "Hi."

A pillow was thrown at her next.

"Okay, you're mad," she started, holding her hands up in a form of surrender. "That means she actually told you all what happened, right? That's a good thing—"

Another pillow was thrown at her.

Marinette let it hit her face before it fell pathetically onto the floor, landing in the spilled coffee.

Bridgette stood up, stumbling before catching herself on the arm of the sofa. "Do you even know who she is?"

"Rose," she replied with a smile. "She told me."

"Marinette, you can't just—I told you _not_ to do this!" Bridgette exclaimed, charging across the room to push her harshly on the shoulders, enough for her to take a step back.

"Well, no," Marinette corrected. "You told me not to punch anyone."

There wasn't any humour in Bridgette's reaction.

Outrage was prominent as Bridgette retorted, "You stabbed her!"

"It wasn't anything serious," she dismissed, crossing her arms, feeling defensive. "She's healed now, right? What's the fucking problem?"

"The problem?" Bridgette questioned incredulous, wide-eyed. "You—you can't just stab her and then declare you're going to kill us? Are you _insane_?"

"I said I'd kill anyone that touches Adrien," Marinette said with a sigh. "What? Did that bit get lost in translation?"

Bridgette bristled. "I hardly think that's what matters."

"That was the whole point of it!" she exclaimed, not backing down. "Did she or did she not say that I'd hurt anyone that touched him? Be specific. I want to know what happened."

"What happened?" Bridgette repeated back, spitting out the words so they almost came out in a hiss. "What happened is that she came back saying that you have a demon weapon on you? You—why would you do that?"

She snorted. "I don't."

"You clearly do," her sister replied, hands curled up into fists by her side. "How could you do that?"

"Please, that was barely anything." Marinette scoffed. "Does everyone know I'm back or not?"

Bridgette didn't answer that.

Marinette didn't drop the subject, stubbornly standing there, staring up at her and not feeling intimidated in the slightest. There might've been a height difference and her body surely looked like it would break from being pushed over too roughly, but no angel would be able to truly hurt her.

It was Bridgette that gave in, her shoulders slumping as she whispered, "They do."

She clapped her hands together. "Great."

"_Great_?" Bridgette questioned, voice high-pitched form disbelief. "You—you never used to be this stupid. What made you think that this would be a good idea?"

"Ruling out of fear is an option," she said with a shrug. "I haven't actually killed anyone yet, there's no reason to be mad."

"You stabbed Rose!"

"But I didn't cut off her hand or anything," Marinette pointed out. "It was barely anything, Bridgette. A demon could've inflicted the same wound."

Bridgette breathed out audibly. "Luka didn't even tell you, did he?"

"I haven't seen him yet," she replied.

"Not that," Bridgette answered, running her fingers through her long hair. "Rose is his sister's girlfriend."

"Okay," she said slowly. "And that's supposed to mean something to me?"

Startled, Bridgette started to reply, "She—"

"Means nothing to me," she interrupted with a frown. "Why would that even matter?"

"Why?" Bridgette questioned, louder than necessary. "That's—Marinette, did you not even think this through? That's someone close to him."

She made a displeased noise. "And she's alive."

"You stabbed her!"

"I've stabbed countless people," she dismissed. "She'll get over it. It's hardly a big deal."

Both of Bridgette's hands wound into her hair, pulling at the scalp as she exclaimed, "No angel has stabbed another before!"

"Because they couldn't," was her answer to that. "I'm clearly making a statement here."

"You almost committed murder!"

"No, I didn't," she denied, exasperated. "I knew what I was doing. What do you think I am? An amateur?"

Bridgette took a step away. "I think you've lost your mind."

"If you're going to be this dramatic, I'll come back later," Marinette announced with a cold look. "I told you that I was going to do this, you just didn't believe me."

Bridgette frowned right back at her. "I didn't think you dabbled in demon weaponry."

She phased away after raising her middle finger as her good-bye.

-x-

Living with Adrien made her restless.

She'd added some more money to her bank account to replenish it from where the student loan had been taken out for her dormitory and schooling, and being the one to buy groceries every other time was causing her stash to dwindle down.

Adrien had said that he was fine paying for the both of them, as he had more than enough money to do that, and as much as she'd come to like being spoiled like that, she wanted to rely on herself, too.

She wasn't about to get a part-time job.

Since his apartment was near the university and a shopping centre, there were a few pubs and nightclubs that were close by with student discounts. Marinette took advantage of that and slipped out in the evening, targeting those that were intoxicated to make it easier.

She didn't feel bad in the slightest.

And Adrien didn't tell her off for it, not when she'd been doing it for years. He accepted her worst traits and the habits she'd kept throughout her life, not trying to change her.

He'd gotten over his horror from the scene with Rose almost immediately.

Marinette left it another week before she went back to see whether her sister had calmed down.

Bridgette had refused to talk to her, stubbornly ignoring her and turning her head away so they wouldn't make eye contact the whole time. It was entirely childish, and Marinette just hovered, following her around the house and staring, not saying anything.

They were alike in how petty they were.

Adrien was refusing to take a side.

"I'm not asking you to," she complained, resting her face against the textbook she had open. The pen she'd been using to study had already rolled off of the table onto the floor. She had no plans to pick it up any time soon. "I'm asking for ideas on how to get her to talk to me."

He repeated for the umpteenth time, "Apologise."

"But I'm not sorry," she countered. "Didn't you say an insincere apology is the worst of all? I'm trying not to be a dick here."

"Talk it through, then," he suggested.

She breathed out loudly. "She's pretending I'm not even there."

"Be annoying, you're good at that," Adrien said, reaching out and poking her cheek that wasn't against the pages of the textbook. "She has to give in eventually and talk to you."

Marinette muttered, "She'll just get more annoyed."

"Then, do something to make her happy," he mused. "What does she like?"

"I—" Marinette started before closing her mouth with a frown.

For all the things they'd spoken about, she didn't know a lot about Bridgette's current life. She knew her tastes in new foods and drinks that had popped up, but hobbies weren't what they dabbled in together.

She realised that she didn't even know who Bridgette's closest friends were.

In the end, it was Adrien that suggested that they could bake something together. Marinette liked food as it was, and neither Bridgette or Luka were likely to turn their nose up at it.

Adrien was delighted.

Other than helping him out when he asked, Marinette hadn't dabbled in the kitchen on the surface. She'd stayed away from it, getting comfort from the familiar feeling of Bridgette's kitchen instead, but with Adrien by her side talking her through everything as though it was her first time, she didn't mind it.

Before her memories had come back, she hadn't done more than boil the kettle to cook instant noodles outside of the classroom.

Adrien wasn't patronising.

"You probably know this already, right?" he questioned with a laugh, hand coming up to touch the nape of his neck.

"A refresher is always helpful," Marinette replied, bumping her hip gently against his. "And you're good teacher."

He grinned. "I am?"

"Yes," she confirmed. "Want me to call you sir?"

"Fuck, no." He wrinkled his nose at that. "I'm not into that kink at all."

She laughed loudly.

The results came out looking sloppy, but they tasted good. Marinette wrapped two up separately with the intention of visiting both Bridgette and Luka to discuss what had happened.

Adrien liked her idea.

Yet, he reached out to touch her arm and quietly asked, "Can you do something for me?"

She tilted her head. "Can I?"

Adrien shifted on the spot, anxiousness obvious from his body language. "Can you—can you not kill anyone?"

That wasn't what she'd expected.

She blinked. "What?"

"Angels!" he blurted, talking quickly. "I mean, don't kill any angels? I just—I'm scared it'll make things worse for you up there? You can knock them around or whatever, but don't kill anyone, okay?"

Her face softened. "Okay."

"Okay?" he repeated, hopeful. "For real?"

"I'd do anything for you, remember?" Marinette reminded him with a smile. "If this'll make you happy, I'll do it."

He hugged her tightly for that.

As he didn't often ask her for specific things, she didn't see any reason to say no. He'd given her permission to hurt anyone she wanted, after all, and it was just the thought of killing any angel that had put him off.

Adrien had her best interests at heart.

She visited Bridgette first.

When she phased into the living room, it was quiet. She'd made it halfway up the stairs when she heard the shower running, so she decided to get a drink in the kitchen first, sitting on the counter and waiting for the kettle to finish boiling.

The cake was placed in the fridge to keep fresh, along with Luka's.

By the time Bridgette made it downstairs, she was bored and playing a game on her phone that didn't require internet. She looked up at the sound of the stairs creaking, missing the game's prompt to tap the screen in time, causing the credits to roll as her character died.

Bridgette stopped in the middle of the living room when she saw her.

Locking the screen, she sheepishly said, "Hi."

Bridgette stared.

"I'm not going to say sorry," Marinette started, clearing her throat. "Because I'm not. And I'm not going to lie to you about that."

The best way to describe Bridgette's expression was disappointed.

"But," she said, jumping down from the counter, careful not to knock over her phone or mug in the process. "I'll tell you what I'm planning in the future, okay? I won't keep you in the dark about it."

With a sigh, Bridgette took a step forward. "Marinette—"

She held up a hand to signal her to stop. "I also brought a peace offering."

Bridgette frowned. "What?"

"I made it with Adrien," she stated, gesturing towards the fridge. "Only one, though. The other's for Luka when I go there next."

Bridgette huffed. "Unless you're planning to sneak across town, you should've left it in your own fridge."

"Oh," she breathed, surprised. "Yeah, I didn't think about that."

Her sister let out an exasperated sigh. "You don't think a lot, do you?"

"Not really, no," she agreed, smiling that Bridgette was willing to talk to her, even if it was backhanded. "You're the brains of the two of us, you know? I'm the brawn."

"You look like a strong breeze would knock you over," Bridgette retorted.

She winked. "It's better for people to underestimate me."

"So you can stab them," was the bitter response to that.

"To be fair, I didn't give her a chance to react," Marinette pointed out. "I stabbed her on instinct because it took so long for anyone to respond to Adrien's calls."

Bridgette crossed her arms. "We grew up with her."

"I didn't even remember her name, Bridgette," she confessed blankly. "And even if I did, it wouldn't have changed anything. I don't regret it."

Running a hand roughly through her hair, Bridgette tried to say, "You can't mean that—"

"Do you think I became an angel again from being a pacifist?" she questioned, tilting her head curiously. "I've killed so many to get where I am—demons and humans. What's wrong with adding a few more to my list?"

It was easy to spot the sadness in Bridgette's expression.

"I'm not here to argue with you," Marinette said, holding her hands up to emphasise her words with a smile that didn't reach her eyes. "I promised Adrien I wouldn't kill anyone, so I won't."

Bridgette frowned. "He can get you to stop, but not me?"

"He can get me to do a lot of things you can't," she stated, leaning back and resting against the counter. "That's not what I want to talk about either."

Her sister sighed. "Then, what?"

"First of all, I thought I should show you something," Marinette announced, placing her hand on her side where her sword was resting underneath her clothing. "You're curious how I managed to hurt Rose, right? Demon weapons don't work for us."

The curiosity she got in return to that was reluctant. Marinette obliged and slowly undid the strap around her waist, taking out the sheathed sword and holding it out for her sister to take ahold of, letting it be in her control. Of all the things she wanted to accomplish, Bridgette being scared of her wasn't one of them.

She could think she was cruel, that she was cold and disconnected, but being terrified was another matter.

Marinette had no want to hurt her.

The small circle of those she wanted to protect had expanded, and Bridgette had wormed her way near the top from simply her existence being known.

As with Adrien, the length of the sword didn't change when Bridgette pulled it out.

That was the curious thing, wasn't it? There had to have been experiments to try and recreate it, surely; yet, it had been regarded as a myth and not believed in the slightest. With her memories back, she'd barely heard mention of it over her time as an archangel when she was one of the ones that fought the most.

When she displayed that unique ability of the sword, Bridgette's enthusiasm grew from begrudging to genuine. She had Marinette repeat it different times, changing how she moved when she pulled it out of the sheath, and suggested that she imagine it as different lengths in her mind to try and influence.

All Marinette could tell her was that it had always been comfortable in her hands, even when she was a small child.

Luka's reaction to it all was less emotional.

His greeting had been to blink and raise a hand to wave at her, his mouth full of food.

She'd placed the cake on the table.

He started eating it immediately.

Surprisingly, he wasn't upset with her.

His sister was, though.

"I've been forbidden from talking to you," he said, licking his lips to get rid of the cream that had smeared. "I'm supposed to erase you from my mind and burn... a herb? I can't remember."

"A ritual?" she questioned, amused.

He shrugged, taking another mouthful of food.

"It's more fun when you're breaking the rules," she stated with a grin, resting her cheek on her hand, elbow propping her arm up. "You always wanted to get in a bit of trouble with me, didn't you?"

Luka hummed. "Not the bloody kind."

"But that's the best," she declared, letting out an exaggerated sigh.

"I'm boring," he said in response to that, straight-faced.

Marinette laughed. "Old age has gotten to you."

He squinted. "We're the same age?"

"Are we?" she questioned. "I'm only eighteen. I don't know what you're on about."

Luka rolled his eyes. "You're an idiot."

"An idiot with a sword," she announced, repeating her action from earlier, undoing the strap around her waist. Luka hadn't looked away when her stomach was on show, and his expression didn't change from the blank one when she continued on to hold out the covered weapon to him. "Want to test it out?"

It didn't work for him either.

Marinette probably shouldn't have been as happy as she was about learning that. Although they could wield it and inflict harm on her if they wanted to—or kill a demon as Adrien had when she was unconscious—there was something thrilling about being the only one capable of drawing out the power it had.

It wasn't the same as the bandalore; that was angel-made and had responded to the dormant genes within her body. If a demon or a human attempted to use it, they'd end up bloody with bones shattered from the impact.

While Marinette had gone for power and become a part of the council of archangels, neither Bridgette or Luka had done the same.

Luka informed her that someone had taken her place, bringing the number back up to seven.

With a voice that didn't portray any worry, he asked, "You're not going to kill her, are you?"

"I'm banned from murder," she announced with a sigh. "But everything else is fair game. You're going to help me, right?"

Luka blinked. "What's in it for me?"

She grinned. "What do you want?"

-x-

There wasn't anything spectacular about Aurore.

The angel had been in the generation before hers; body stuck in her late twenties, golden-coloured hair that hung in soft curls down her back, and the sight of the hair from the back had Marinette clenching her hand into a fist from remembering it on someone else.

She wasn't there to cause trouble.

Marinette had been given the rough location of the home, but it was Luka supplying her pictures of the living room that made it possible for her to phase there. All he'd had to do was look in through the large front window.

Aurore hadn't noticed her come in.

The sense that an angel was nearby was almost always active in Heaven as the houses weren't spaced out that far. In the rare moments where it was down, it would come back in seconds when someone would fly past, triggering it.

Marinette threw her sword, the blade piercing through the middle of Aurore's back with ease. With a flick of her hand, the bandalore flew out the grasp onto the handle of the weapon, pulling it back out so it landed comfortably back in her hand, blood splattering across the room in the process.

She was a little proud of the movement.

Aurore wasn't in the state to appreciate it, however. She was hunched over on the floor, noises of agony escaping her as she frantically put her hands over the wound on her stomach where the sword had pierced through her in a matter of seconds.

"You won't die from that," Marinette said as her greeting, trailing the tip of the sword across the wooden floor as she crossed the room, coming to stand in front of Aurore's fallen form. "I'm just here to talk, relax."

"_Relax_?" Aurore questioned in a shriek. And as she tried to turn around to face her, crying out in pain as more blood came from her wound, any further words turned into sobs instead.

Marinette sighed. "If I wanted you dead, you would be already."

"Real—real reassuring," Aurore choked out, voice shaking as much as her bloodstained hands were from the pain. "Why the fuck am I next?"

She was delighted at that. "You swear?"

"You—what?" Aurore sounded baffled.

"Barely anyone swears up here," she said, using her sword for balance as she crouched down so they were on eye level with each other. "If I knew you were fun to talk to, maybe you wouldn't be like this right now."

To her amusement, Aurore asked through her tears, "What the fuck are you on about?"

"We're talking," Marinette announced. "You and me. You don't want to phase away and risk worsening your injury, do you? And some human could see you and try and get you to go to the hospital."

At that, Aurore gritted her teeth and tried to adjust how she was sitting, both hands still clutching onto her wound where blood continued to flow. It wasn't fatal. "What do you _want_?"

Marinette grinned. "I want you to step down from the council."

Aurore grimaced. "What?"

"Step down," she repeated, purposely looking down to see the blood on her sword dripping down onto the floor between them. "I don't have to say what'll happen if you don't, right?"

To her surprise, Aurore didn't give in immediately. "Are you insane?"

"No?" Marinette replied with a laugh. "What would give you that idea?"

"You can't—" Aurore let out a noise of pain, clutching her wound tighter. "You really think you can just come in here and push me out? I earned my fucking place."

"It was mine first," she coldly reminded her. "You were never in consideration for it."

And even with tears trailing down her cheeks and her breathing uneven, Aurore tried to say, "I _deserve_ it—"

"This isn't personal," Marinette said, putting her weight on her sword as she stood up, pulling it out of the dent it had created on the floor without resistance. And as she looked into Aurore's wide eyes, she used the tip of her sword to touch her chin, causing her to look up as the blade cut gently into the skin. "You're the weakest link, so it's natural you go first, right?"

If it had been years ago, her control on how much strength she was putting into the sword wouldn't have been so consistent.

She would've sliced through Aurore's head accidentally.

Fresh blood coated the blade from the contact, a few small pebbles that stood out.

With a smile, she advised, "Give up your place before I lose my temper."

The gossip that that visit stirred up was amusing to hear.

Of all the things that came out of it, nothing compared to Adrien holding her close and whispering, "You kept your promise."

She beamed.

Bridgette was upset that she'd resorted to violence again, but she'd been told beforehand that time. The reaction was more of disbelief that she'd gone through with it—her sister still found it hard to come to terms with her new personality.

Marinette wondered how differently she must act.

Luka seemed to like her just as much as before.

Instead of scolding her when she came to visit, he informed her that Aurore really had stepped down from her position, but not before ranting that she'd been threatened and it was only because of that that it was happening.

The perfect idea that humans had of angels was horribly off.

None of them had ever been perfect, though they'd never claimed to be. Aurore was a perfect example of thinking she was better than she was, and it was only because she'd taken our three demons at once that she'd been nominated for the position on the council.

Marinette had scoffed at that.

Luka asked her, "When am I getting that prize?"

The answer came after Adrien's birthday.

His parents had come up to visit, not surprised to see Marinette there when she answered the door, having no warning that they were planning to come at all. She had to awkwardly say that she'd wake Adrien up because he was still asleep—as he'd stayed up to try and finish a game while she was snoozing beside him—and to her horror, his pyjamas didn't even match when he walked out of the bedroom.

He'd clearly grabbed the first shirt that he'd seen in his drawer.

And yet, his parents didn't complain. The first thing his father did was get out a hairbrush from his bag and hold it out while wishing him a happy birthday.

Adrien had smiled widely and obediently brushed his hair.

Somehow, he made it stick out worse.

His mother had given them a lift further into the city to find a nice-looking restaurant to eat at. Marinette hadn't thought she was invited at first, instead thinking of how she would manage to follow after them when she was barely acquainted with the streets, but when both of his parents turned to look at her expectantly, asking why she hadn't put her shoes on yet, it was obvious that she was expected to be there.

Her smile reached her eyes.

It was nice to see them after a few months.

Adrien's father reminded her that she could call them if she had any questions, and his mother fretted, saying that she looked pale and needed to eat some more.

She wondered if that was what having parents felt like.

It was like having a less insulting Chloé.

And when she realised what she'd thought, her stomach tightened and felt uncomfortable. Her relationship with Chloé had been two beings that were centuries years old—but neither of them had known that. Marinette had been young, lost and confused, and Chloé had begrudgingly taken her in and taken care of her. It didn't matter that she'd had other motives.

She still wondered if she'd find anyone else like Chloé if she gave demons a chance.

Then again, that would only be dangerous in the long run.

For as little as angels cared about humans any more, letting demons run rampant would be even more annoying.

It was good that angels mostly stuck to Heaven other than when they dabbled down on the surface.

Luka's curiosity got the best of him.

"Oh! I wasn't sure when you two were coming!" Adrien exclaimed, jumping up from where he was sitting to quickly cross the room.

With a pained noise, Marinette almost fell over after she opened her arms and stopped carrying Luka, slumped over and groaning in exaggeration.

"Good job," Luka praised, standing up properly without stumbling in the slightest. "Your hand was a little low, though. It was inappropriate."

She wheezed. "I just carried your ungrateful ass and you're _complaining_?"

"You never hold me like that," Adrien stated, peering at the two of them curiously. "Is this a best friend only thing? I'm jealous."

She deadpanned, "My arms are literally going to fall off."

Luka snorted. "Dramatic."

"I'm a child!" Marinette shot back, straightening up and putting her hands on her aching back.

"You're eighteen," Adrien corrected, smiling. Then, he turned towards the other person that was suddenly in his kitchen, happily holding out a hand and saying, "Hi! I'm Adrien. I didn't know you could phase down here together?"

She made a point of pushing her shoulders back until her back clicked. "That's because it sucks."

"It's difficult," Luka replied, slowly shaking Adrien's hand with a blank expression. "It requires the one phasing to fully carry whatever they wish to take with them."

Adrien wasn't scared.

In comparison, Luka was hesitant. He thought his words through before he opened his mouth, only being loose and more comfortable when she was beside him and being the one to talk. He'd always been shy, but it was clear he was putting extra care into how he conversed with Adrien.

It made her happy.

What Luka asked for wasn't something she could give.

So, she let Adrien be the one to explain social media properly to him.

Luka had wanted to pursue music in the past, but it was him disliking talking with others that had made him decide against it in the end. The internet had changed how that all worked, however; so he wanted advice on how to post songs online properly.

It was a little strange to see the talk of them talking so freely.

When Adrien saw the outdated phone model that Luka had, she almost laughed aloud.

"What is this?" Adrien questioned, aghast. "It's so... weird."

"Old," was all Luka said in response.

"A phone," she quipped. "Can't you tell?"

"It's like a _brick_," he remarked, turning it to the side to see the width. "I've never actually seen one in person before. Why haven't you gotten a new one? This doesn't even have games."

Luka shrugged. "I haven't needed to."

Once he got started, Adrien only stopped when it was obvious he was making someone else uncomfortable. He leaned forward curiously, asking, "Why?"

"It doesn't work up there." And as if to clarify that, Luka pointed to the ceiling. "And I rarely come down here enough to use it."

Marinette scooted closer to him on the sofa, "Oh, didn't we have matching ones?"

Luka clicked his tongue. "You smashed yours."

"Yeah, probably," she agreed, taking the device out of his hands, pressing a few buttons until she got the menu to come up. When she went into contacts, it was only her name there. "I should smash this one, too."

He snorted. "Go for it."

"I forget you're old sometimes," Adrien remarked thoughtfully. "You don't act like a dinosaur."

Marinette huffed. "I'm hardly a dinosaur."

"Most immortals in stories are, like, super smart and know everything," he pointed out. "I think you're a fake."

"Do you remember ten years ago perfectly?" she shot back.

Adrien beamed. "I barely remember last week."

"Exactly, it's bullshit," she muttered. "My head would fucking hurt from remembering all of that."

Then it came to Adrien questioning, "If you've only got this shitty phone, how are you expecting to post online?"

Luka blinked. "On my laptop."

"Laptop?" he queried, curious. "You've got one of those?"

"Yes?" It came out sounding like a question. "Why wouldn't I?"

"Doesn't—I mean, phones don't work up there, right?" Adrien asked. And when he got a nod for confirmation, he quietly queried, "Why would internet? That doesn't—internet's not a Heaven thing, is it?"

Luka sighed audibly. "Did you not tell him anything?"

Marinette rolled her eyes, slumping back against the sofa dramatically. "It's not like he asked. Besides, I barely know about any of the updates."

"Barely?" Luka repeated. "You've seen me and Bridgette—"

"Yeah, but do you think that's what I focus on?" she countered, petulantly crossing her arms. "I have a bad attention span. And we don't really watch stuff? We talk. I mean, I talk with you as well. You're as guilty as leaving me in the dark here."

"You're not in the dark," Luka retorted with an exasperated sigh. Then, he turned towards Adrien and asked, "What do you know?"

"...About?"

"How Heaven works?" he prompted.

"I—that's a bit of a loaded question, isn't it?" Adrien stuttered out, running a hand through his hair and pushing it away from his face. "I-I know about the council? And—"

"Oh, not that," Luka dismissed with a wave of his hand. He leaned back, getting comfortable and propping his elbow on the arm of the chair, resting his cheek in his had. "What about how we get all our things? You don't think we sit up there and blankly stare at walls, right?"

"It—it just appears, right?" It came out sounding like a question. Adrien seemed aware of that as he grimaced, looking as though he'd been called upon in class to answer a question that he wasn't confident about. "Like the houses? If you want it, it specifically comes into being for you?"

Luka hummed. "Kind of."

"Kind of?" Adrien tilted his head. "Then, how do you have a laptop?"

"Because I wanted one," Luka responded.

"Helpful," Marinette muttered, jabbing Luka in the side with her elbow. "What he means to say—I doubt it's changed _that_ much, but if you want something, it appears? So, let's say you want to watch something, yeah? If you think of certain requirements, options will show up on a television or any other device that's capable of playing them."

Luka clarified, "The limitations are that it has to exist down here."

If anything, Adrien just looked more baffled. "You don't have your own?"

"When there's so little of us?" Luka's smile didn't reach his eyes. "That would be terribly boring."

"Heaven's a different place, but it—it was originally for your kind to want for nothing in the afterlife as a reward," she pointed out, a bitter tone to her voice. "If it didn't function like that, wouldn't all of you whine that you're missing out on things from your life?"

Adrien's brow furrowed. "But phones don't work—"

"You can't communicate with anyone that's still living," Luka interrupted. "You can't comment on their videos or try and get into contact with them. You can view their works, but you're anonymous."

"That doesn't really make sense," he replied, confused. "Wouldn't that mean no one from—from Earth can comment on your videos?"

Luka blinked. "That's why I'll phase down before publishing them."

If anything, Adrien just sounded more confused as he said, "...Okay."

-x-

Her next target in Heaven was uneventful.

"I've already resigned," they said as their greeting. "Nice wig, by the way."

She phased back down, frustrated.

"Already?" Adrien questioned, putting down his comic book and getting up from where he was lounging on the sofa. "You left, like, ten minutes ago?"

"I barely got to say anything," she complained, crossing her arms with a frown. "I thought—that there would be some more resistance? Neither Bridgette or Luka told me that they'd already stepped down from the council either."

"Maybe they didn't know," Adrien pointed out, not wanting her to argue with anyone. "Or it slipped their minds? This is a good thing, isn't it?"

She scowled, scuffing her shoe against the floor. "It's a boring thing."

"Are you pouting?" he questioned with a laugh. And when she didn't respond to that, only turning her head to look away from him, Adrien closed the distance between them to wrap his arms around her waist, pulling her close. "You're so cute, you know that, right?"

She sniffed. "I am not."

"So very cute," he insisted, leaning down to press a kiss to her cheek. "You're literally a murderer but you've got the face of an angel."

"I will kick you," she threatened.

Adrien laughed loudly. "It's an expression!"

"It's full of shit," Marinette complained, leaning into his hug and resting her cheek against his chest, closing her eyes with a happy sigh. "And so are you."

She could feel it as he laughed. "For thinking you're pretty?"

"Yes," she confirmed. "This is, like, a weak version of how I used to look."

"Because you've lost a few inches?" he questioned.

"All over," Marinette muttered.

"I don't care about how you used to look," Adrien told her, briefly tightening his hold on her. "I haven't even seen a picture, remember? And I don't want to. The you you are now is the one I love."

"I was nicer, though," she replied quietly. "In both looks and personality. You wouldn't—you wouldn't have been so scared of me in the beginning if I was still like that."

He breathed out audibly.

For all the faults she had for how she'd previously been, it didn't escape her how her life might've been easier if she'd still been bright-eyed and trusting. She might've taken a policeman's hand and been taking into the foster system and adopted, or approached Adrien immediately when she moved to the city—

"But I'm glad I'm not like that," she confessed. "It was tiring."

He snorted. "And now you freely tell people to fuck off?"

"Yes," Marinette confirmed with a hidden grin. "And I stab them as I'm saying hi. I can't tell you how many times I wanted to do something to make them listen to me, you know? I've gotten so much more done because I've made a few of them bleed now. It's... strange."

"You're peaceful," he reminded her. "If you take it too far, it'll all backfire."

"I have no plans to make a life there again," she replied without hesitation. "If something goes wrong, so be it. I'll deal with it."

"Marinette," he started softly, running his fingers through her grey hair. "I'd rather live a short life with you than cause your kind to turn against you."

Her hand tightened her grip on his shirt. "Your life is short no matter what."

"Why not enjoy it with me, then?" he proposed, voice as soft as his touch. "We could always run away to the countryside. There would be less demons there, right?"

Fondly, she asked, "Would that make you happy?"

"Being with you makes me happy," Adrien told her, leaning back and cradling her head with his hands, prompting her to look up instead of resting against his chest. "Why not ditch the classes and escape? I'd cherish every day with you."

She quietly replied, "Your parents wouldn't be happy."

He wrinkled his nose. "Who cares about them?"

"You do," she answered, reaching up to touch his hand that was cupping her cheek. "You wouldn't abandon them to run off with me."

Adrien didn't try to lie. "But it was a nice thought, right?"

She laughed, a breathy sound that was filled with happiness. "The best."

"Just being with you like this is enough," he confessed in a whisper. "I don't care that I can't go out all the time. I wouldn't want to if you weren't with me in the first place."

She questioned, "You don't mind not answering the door?"

"That's why there's a hole for peeping." He beamed. "I'm making good use of it, don't worry."

"I worry about you a lot," she said, standing on her toes to kiss him chastely on the lips. "You're my doofus. It's my responsibility to look after you."

Adrien laughed, kissing her right back. "When did you adopt me?"

"Maybe around the time you shared your toys with me?" she mused, teasing. "That was an offer of friendship that came with a bodyguard for life without you realising it."

His eyes crinkled at the corner from his smile. "I'm lucky, then."

"I'd like to think so," she murmured, not protesting when he kissed her properly.

When she slipped out the front door later that evening, Adrien saluted at her before sliding the lock in place, not needing to be told not to answer the door any more when she wasn't there. It was a safety precaution that he hadn't fought against when it was first brought up.

She truly hoped that he was happy living not as easy-going as other people he knew. He said that he preferred to stay in with her, happy to by her side, and while she felt the same and rarely wanted to leave his side, she knew that they couldn't spend every minute together.

Adrien was social.

So, instead of him going to another student's place and having to drag her awkwardly on, Adrien either went to the library or invited them over to his apartment—but only after he'd cleared it with her.

As much as she reminded him that it was technically his place, Adrien waved that off, saying that she lived there enough to get a say in the matter.

She didn't mind it.

When she was in his bedroom while he was with others in the kitchen and living, or on the table next to her in the library, she was happy with hearing him laugh. She didn't feel the need to be included or know what every conversation he was in was about; rather, she wanted to stay close to ensure that he was safe.

The amount of demons she'd killed in the new city was pitiful in comparison to before.

It did cause some amusement, though.

Originally, she'd planned to swipe a few wallets and be on her way—wanting to get enough to buy Adrien a nice present for the holidays—so when the opportunity to have popped up, she wasn't one to say no.

She pretended to be human.

And when she identified who it was that was different, she walked up to them and asked them politely for the time.

As they answered, she got her wings out.

The startled reaction she got made her laugh aloud when the demon turned the other way and started to run away. There were humans around so they couldn't leap and do something supernatural that would be caught.

Marinette followed along after them, relaxing her wings and putting them back so she wouldn't be sensed any more. It was a hilarious detail that she'd rarely taken advantage of in the past; she'd wanted to be known and to make her presence obvious from the moment she was called down instead of playing around.

It was different now.

She had blood on her shoe when she made it back home.

Adrien sighed, holding his hand out and accepting the dirty shoe, taking it into the kitchen and trying to scrub it underneath the tap. The white was sure to be stained, but he was stubborn and opened up the cupboard to get out cleaning products to aid him.

She stripped, putting her dirty clothes into the washing machine.

And when she came out in her pyjamas to see that he'd turned the machine on, offering her a bright smile in greeting, it was a reminder that she wasn't alone any more. It was the little things he did that made her happy, and she hoped that she was able to do them in return for him.

It was different to living with her sister.

For one, they still had classes to attend to.

They had two exams before the winter break. She'd phased into Luka's home to tell him that she'd be busy for the upcoming future, not wanting to drop out from failed grades when Adrien wasn't planning on quitting any time soon, and the news she got in return was that there had been no news of her second visit to a council member.

Bridgette and Luka had no idea that they'd dropped out until she'd told them.

Information was being kept a secret, then.

For a while, she focused on school instead.

Adrien's parents invited her to stay at theirs.

She'd expected the invitation, yet it was still touching to receive it.

His parents picked them up the day after break started. Adrien hadn't packed anything by the time they arrived, so he had to hurry and throw things into a bag, packing far too many socks for how long they'd be there.

Plagg urinated in his carrier before they made it halfway back.

Alya and Nino both hugged her tightly when she saw them again.

"You look the same," Alya declared, sounding a bit glum. "I thought you'd have a big glow up or something."

Marinette snorted. "I'm pretty sure I gained a bit of weight."

"Like, the smallest amount," Alya remarked, putting a small distance between her thumb and index finger to make a point. "Are you sleeping enough? You look sick."

"I can't get sick any more," she pointed out, amused. "Are you mothering me right now?"

"I'm allowed to be worried!"

"Still keeping your hair?" Nino questioned, bumping his shoulder against hers. "Not that I don't dig it, but aren't you bored yet?"

She shrugged. "It's fine."

"We could always do something more fun," Adrien proposed, going as far as to thoughtfully place his hand on his chin. "Or you could go back to black and look like a corpse because you barely see the sun."

She squinted at him. "I see the sun as much as you."

He nodded. "So, barely."

"You're both pale as hell," Alya pitched in with a roll of her eyes. "Why are you even bickering about something so useless? I hate you both."

Adrien batted his eyes. "You don't hate me."

Alya's face scrunched up in distaste. "I despise you."

"You love me," he proclaimed, moving closer and wrapping an arm around Alya's shoulder. "You're my biggest fan."

"All of those things are reserved for Marinette only," Alya declared, stepping out of his grasp. "I've passed on my titles to her and now I'm able to hate you freely. I had so much fun with you gone."

And as Marinette smiled, Nino snickered and leaned in closer to whisper, "Didn't you miss this?"

"Yeah," she agreed, not taking her eyes away from the two as they started to get more animated. "I did."

"I missed you, too," Nino said, smile so obvious in his voice that she didn't have to look up to see it. "You know you can always bother me, right? Even if it's just to tell me something stupid."

Her smile reached her eyes. "I know."

"Good," he replied, dramatically leaning against her and resting his cheek on top of her head. "Because I'm going to do the same to you. You're going to have to block my number to stop me."

There was no denying that she'd missed them.

She wanted them to remain innocent and unaware of what was really happening in her life—having them know that she wasn't completely human any more was enough. They wouldn't be in danger from demons in the future, and knowing how to keep Adrien safe was a plus that made them finding out worth it.

It was strange she'd collected so many people she wanted to protect when she'd been so alone in the beginning.

Without Adrien offering his hand to her, none of it would've happened.

She doubted she would've killed enough demons to gain back her powers and see her sister again.

Her eyes felt hot as she watched Adrien slap Alya's hands away playfully, earning an insult that was shrieked at him in return.

She wanted to repay him.

It was when only Nino could come over the next day that Marinette said she was going out. Adrien gave her a wink because he knew she was going to see her sister.

She didn't get dressed up for the winter weather as Heaven would never be that cold. Instead, she ventured into the guest room that had been given to her again, the space slowly becoming more familiar to her, and looked in the mirror to see whether she looked presentable.

While she didn't look her age, she didn't look like a child.

She touched her cheek, glad she didn't look gaunt any more.

With a breath, she visualised Bridgette's living room.

There wasn't anyone home.

Instead of sitting around and waiting, Marinette got a drink from the kitchen, taking off the lid and shoving a straw into the bottle before she ventured outside. She squinted from the sun at first, holding up a hand to shield her eyes from the sun, before she started to walk down the quaint path that led to the town centre.

The houses had changed.

It was natural, of course. Everyone would want to change where and how they lived eventually, yet it was still surprising to see.

The flower fields were the same.

She sipped her drink, taking her time as she walked through, ignoring the curious gazes when saw who it was looking at her. It was a little amusing for the realisation of who they were looking at to sink in when she didn't have to take out her wings for anyone to recognise her.

Then again, the occupants of the town surely all knew each other. The dwindling amount of them left must've caused them to be more friendly with those that were left.

It didn't take long to bump into Rose.

She was sitting down on a blanket in the shade underneath a tree, idly turning the page and giving the book her full attention.

Marinette sat down beside her, one leg propped up to rest her elbow on as she took a pointedly loud sip through her straw.

Rose looked up, startled, and the horror on her expression was too amusing.

She laughed loudly.

Rose quickly shut the book, going to stand up and run away, so Marinette used her hand not holding her drink to reach out and take her wrist.

"Sit," she said. "I'm not here to hurt you this time, for real."

To her surprise, Rose actually listened. She sat back down, but moved to the edge of the blanket so there was space between them.

"Luka said to talk to you," Rose announced.

Marinette raised her eyebrows. "Did he?"

Rose just stared.

"Do you want your sword back?" she offered. "I was going to bring it but I forgot."

Rose narrowed her eyes. "Really?"

"Sure, hang on," Marinette replied, moving her shoulders to crack her back before she put her drink into Rose's hand. "Hold onto this for me real quick, yeah?"

And before she got a response to that, she phased into Adrien's apartment, opening the wardrobe and getting the sword out from behind the boxes at the bottom. The worst part of keeping it meant that she had to hide it somewhere where Plagg wouldn't hurt himself.

It was strange having to think about things like that.

Then again, being the one to feed a small animal and clean out his litter tray was a new experience as well. Adrien insisted that if she lived with him, she had to experience being a parent.

It felt like she was caring for two children at times.

She phased standing on top of Rose's book.

"Oh, sorry," she said, completely insincere as she stepping off of it.

It was only handing over the weapon that earned her a less distrusting look.

She cleared her throat. "I would've stabbed anyone that answered. I'm sorry it had to be you."

That wasn't a complete lie, was it?

Rose gaped, mouth open with no words coming out.

And with that, she took back her drink before turning on her heel and started to walk away towards the town centre. She took a sip through her straw, pleased that Bridgette still enjoyed the same flavours as her, and had thought that conversation with Rose could be left where it was.

However, Rose had a different idea.

"That's _it_?" Rose exclaimed, loud enough to be heard. "That's all you have to say to me?"

Marinette frowned, looking over her shoulder. "What more do you want?"

And when Rose didn't how how to respond again, she quickened her pace and walked away at more than a leisurely pace. The angels that she passed after that averted their gazes, no one attempting to strike up a conversation with her.

When she made it into the centre square, Marinette approached one that she couldn't remember the name of. "Do you know where Arlette is?"

They stared at her.

Marinette took a loud sip from her straw.

She was pointed in the direction of the library.

Typical.

The door chimed with a bell when she opened it. As always, the library was fully-stocked, in good condition with grand windows that had expensive-looking curtains tied into place to allow sunlight to shine through and illuminate the room. It was fancier than any library she'd visited on the surface—then again, her experiences had been limited to school and campus ones only.

She didn't wipe her feet on the mat at the front door.

There were a few others inside, sitting down on armchairs or at desks for room to space out their items, but the woman she was looking up was at the back of the room. Arlette was lounging on an armchair, legs thrown over one arm with the book resting against her thighs.

Marinette sat down on the armchair beside her.

Arlette had cut her blonde hair off until it reached her chin.

And when Arlette looked up to see who had come in, the first words from her were, "I wondered when I'd be seeing you."

"Hi," Marinette greeted, slumping in the chair and getting comfortable. "You're still trying to learn everything you can, then?"

"Knowledge is power," Arlette remarked, not sounding scared in the slightest. "I've heard you've learnt a thing or two since our last meeting."

"Where you called me foolish?" she quipped.

Arlette hummed. "Is that what caused you to fall?"

"Eh," she replied non-committally. "I'm not here about that. The past is the past for a reason, right?"

Closing her book, Arlette didn't try to sit up properly as she said, "Look at you trying to sound wise."

She finished the rest of her drink, taking her time putting the bottle down on the floor beside her feet before she looked her in the eyes and declared, "I want back on the council."

To her credit, Arlette didn't laugh. "Why?"

"I want to let a human in," she simply said.

Arlette sighed, putting her index finger to her temple and closing her eyes. "You're back to this already?"

"It's different this time," she stated, propping her head up with her elbow on the arm of the chair. Her smile didn't reach her eyes as she elaborated, "I want to grant access to one. He's the reason I was able to become an angel again."

Instead of curiosity, there was only boredom in Arlette's voice. "A human was?"

"He's pure," Marinette stated. "And I've been protecting him."

"His purity is more of a reason to kill him," Arlette responded, opening her eyes and looking at her blankly.

"And trying to kill him is more reason for me to hurt anyone that touches him, don't you agree?" Marinette responded without skipping a beat. "I've killed more demons than anyone here, even before I fell. That should qualify me to some sort of reward."

The reply she got to that was, "We've never asked you to do that."

"Maybe not any more," she agreed, pushing her hair behind her ear. "But I saved you all a lot of work before we were in charge."

Arlette's countered that with, "That hardly matters any more."

"No, I suppose not." Marinette sat up, her oversized shirt falling off of one shoulder and surely ruining anything intimidating about her when she looked too small and thin in comparison to everyone else in Heaven. "I was told to give negotiations a chance before resorting to stabbing. You did see what I did to the others, yes?"

And while Arlette was lounging on the chair still, hardly looking like the figure of authority she was, Marinette wasn't nervous. She might've been the first from the younger generation to join the council, but she'd earned it.

Age didn't mean anything.

Arlette raised her eyebrows. "Are you threatening me?"

"That depends." Marinette smile showed her teeth. "Are you going to give me what I want or not?"

"We're not going to suddenly change and allow a human in here," Arlette responded with a disapproving tone. "Least of all for you."

She tilted her head. "Me?"

"You were the one that always cared too much for them."

She'd never been close with Arlette.

And even if she had, Bridgette and Luka had taken time to fully realise how different she'd come to be. For her to come forth and demand that she only cared about one human after thinking them all pitiful and need of protection before—

She wasn't bitter that they didn't believe her.

Marinette didn't break eye contact as she slowly stated, "If he dies, I'll kill as many of you as I can before you take me down."

When Arlette laughed at that, she phased away.

The white of the guest room wasn't welcoming.

With one of her hands clenched into a fist, Marinette opened the door and stepped into the hallway, far enough to hear Adrien's laughter leaking out of the bedroom from where he had to have the door open. Him and Nino were sitting on the beanbag together, Nino half draped over him to make it so they could both fit on it comfortably, and they were laughing at something on playing on a phone.

In that short moment of listening to them, she felt happier than the time she'd spent in her previous home.

-x-

There was one important detail that she'd forgotten.

While Bridgette didn't know where she lived while at university, Luka did from the time he'd come down to meet Adrien.

So, when Adrien's parents drove them back to the city and Marinette went up first to unlock the door and put Plagg inside, she was greeted by the sight of Luka standing in front of the open fridge, drinking a bottle of water.

"What the fuck?" she blurted.

He raised a hand in greeting.

Thankfully, he phased away when she asked him to hide. Marinette had expected him to maybe run into the bedroom and stay there for a while, but instead, Luka reappeared hours later when they were in the middle of dinner.

She choked on her food.

Instead of waving at her, Luka hit her back.

Adrien was torn between concern and laughing at her reaction.

When Luka brought his phone out, it wasn't the outdated model from before. Her comment that he'd upgraded earned her a glare.

She resisted teasing him for the red that had appeared on his cheeks when Adrien started to give him pointers for his social media, happily helping him out without asking for anything in return. Adrien was excited to make a friend, and he said that the fact that Luka had embarrassing stories about her past made it better.

Bridgette had met him once and been charmed, so she wondered how Luka was faring.

From Luka's smile, she had to assume that Adrien had befriended him, too.

It was almost midnight when Luka admitted, "I came here to see you fight."

Marinette pointed at her face in question.

"I'm curious whether you've become better or not," he remarked. "But then I got distracted."

"Sorry," Adrien apologised, pushing his hair away from his face. "You can go out now, if you want? We don't have classes tomorrow, so Marinette won't have to look like a zombie in front of our professors."

She snorted. "You mean you won't. I know you're going to stay up playing."

"I never said I wasn't," he said with a grin.

"You sure you're cool with me going out?" Marinette asked.

"Yeah, absolutely," Adrien replied, giving her a thumbs up. "I'll make sure to lock the door and everything, don't worry. If I fall asleep, you can do your weird phase thing to get inside."

Luka snorted.

The weather was cold, so after getting Adrien's permission, Marinette dragged Luka into the bedroom and raided their wardrobe for warmer clothing for the two of them. She shoved a hat on Luka's head, ruining his attempt of a hairstyle without trying to, and gave him a button-up shirt that he could put on underneath his jacket for a small bit of extra warmth.

Then, she gave one of her pairs of fingerless gloves.

He raised his eyebrows at that.

"They're useful," she assured him, pulling her own on.

Having someone by her side as she prowled the streets for demons wasn't something she'd experienced for so long. Although Luka didn't have Chloé's sharp retorts or jokes that were borderline mean, it was a welcome change to have someone talking to her.

He hadn't brought his sword.

"I want to see you fight, not me," was his explanation for that.

She rolled her eyes.

It turned out with two of them being able to sense demons, it caused them to bicker about whether they were pointing out the right person. Then, when Luka suggested that she could get her wings out to draw them out instead.

They had a bit of fun with it.

Marinette got her wings out, sword still tucked away under her shirt while she held her bandalore instead, and waited for a minute before putting them away. They were near a nightclub, close enough for a demon to sense them as they could in return.

She repeated it three times before someone came stumbling out of the nightclub, visibly aggravated.

Luka laughed beside her.

While she knew some demons would run in the opposite direction, selfish with their power and unwilling to risk it, but there were always those that had too much pride.

As it turned out, it wasn't one demon that came to investigate.

Compared to in the past when she only had surprise on her side to come out on top, she could take hits without falling over in pain. Marinette had blood splattered over her, shirt torn from where a demon had handled her roughly, and her hat had fallen onto the wet ground, but her smile was wide.

She flicked her sword to get some blood of it.

Luka didn't shy away from her gaze as she questioned, "Your verdict?"

He clapped.

Marinette laughed.

"You like the bandalore," he said, no questioning lilt to his voice. "There's not many of them left any more, is there?"

She shrugged. "I never checked with the blacksmith."

"We were warned against favouring that style of fighting," Luka remarked, holding his hand out, palm up with his intentions clear. And when she put the bandalore into his hand without hesitation, he held it close to inspect it. "I haven't seen one for—I don't even know how long."

"Pretty sure the older ones died with theirs," Marinette theorised. "I found it with a hunter."

He raised his eyebrows. "And they didn't try and use it?"

"I'm assuming not because he was in one piece," she replied, wiggling her fingers in a clear sign that she wanted it back. Luka complied, handing it over so she could stuff it into her pocket and zip it up safely. "He hid it and protected it."

Luka mused, "Humans are weird when they have something powerful."

"I wouldn't say it's exclusive to humans, would you?" she questioned, wiping her blade on her ripped jeans before lifting up her shirt to tuck it away. "We're the same with Heaven."

"It's our home," he countered.

"It was supposed to be more," she pointed out. "I'm glad that it's not. It would be full of shouting and noises, and there would be an endless amount let in, filling up all the spaces with houses."

Luka put his hands in the pockets of his jacket, shifting his feet. "You used to want that."

"I was stupid," she countered. "It was a shock when the humans got kicked out at first, you know? But now looking back on it, I wouldn't want anything else. Why should them doing a few good deeds grant them access to the same space as us?"

His brow furrowed. "You're literally trying to get that to happen right now."

"For one." She held up one finger to emphasise that. "I'm not petitioning to open the gates and allow endless humans inside to disturb our peace. I want to give Adrien a happy ending, that's all."

Luka frowned. "Because you love him."

"Because he's everything to me," she confessed in a whisper, pulling her sleeves down over her hands. "I did so much for him, Luka. And now I know it's all for shit because he's going to suffer when he's inevitably killed."

"It's not _that_ bad," he interjected.

"How would you know?" she questioned, looking up at him blankly. "We can't go there."

"It's the middle place, is it not?" Luka replied, averting his gaze and looking down at the puddles of blood on the ground instead. "They're not suffering in Hell. They're just—existing."

Marinette didn't try and argue that. "And he deserves better."

"Why him above everyone else?" he questioned, taking a step forward until the front of their shoes were almost touching. "It's not me you have to convince here. You can't kill the council and takeover—you'll be overpowered and stabbed with your own sword if you try that."

"Why must he be condemned to a cruel end because of how he was born?" she shot back, voice growing louder as she jabbed a finger into his chest. "If anything, he should be rewarded for being the reason that I'm back to being an angel. Is that so much to ask for?"

Luka softly asked her, "Do you think it is?"

Her hand fell down to her side.

The words came out in a whisper, "Yes."

"We've been denying humans for centuries" Luka reminded her, gently reaching out and placing his hand on her shoulder, giving her a comforting squeeze. "If you want to win the council over, you need to remember that we've been mingling with humans for just as long, too."

She frowned. "What?"

"You might not care about anyone else," he said with a small smile. "But others have before. Try and use your words instead, yeah?"

"Oh," she murmured, momentarily taken aback. "That's... right."

It opened up a lot of options.

Marinette had been too careless and dismissive of others to realise it without him. It was common knowledge that angels dabbled in life on the surface for a while at different points in their life, getting close to humans in the process. It was the differences in their lifespans that had them coming back up to Heaven and reverting to a previous lifestyle.

Until Adrien, she'd never connected with a human.

Her feelings for wanting to protect him couldn't have been that different.

All the humans that had previously been in Heavens had been pushed out when the council was formed and they started off anew, wanting to be in control of who was allowed in and not, and it was a majority vote that caused the exclusion to start.

Marinette had been the most vocal against it.

It wasn't her goal any more. She wasn't looking down on humans from above and thinking they were were pitiful creatures for putting all that effort, trying, and waiting in their lives for it to amount to nothing when their fate was decided from the start.

One lifetime was enough for most, but Adrien's time had been limited since he was a child.

She wanted more for him.

For all the humans that had already been pushed out of Heaven, there wasn't any way back for them. It wasn't possible for an angel to step in the other places, but there was a fact that no one had created a fuss when the humans were first getting exiled.

If anything, no angels had cared about them deeply enough to fight.

They'd all wanted a new start under their own management.

Adrien brought up the question, "How did it get changed? Like, where humans went, I mean? Where there some sort of a code you had to input in a system or something—"

She snorted. "Before electricity, dude."

"Oh, right," he murmured, resting his chin on his open palm, elbow on the table as he ignored the textbook open in front of him. "You're only able to have anything that's down here, too, right?"

"Yes," she agreed, tapping her fingers against the table. "It was the same with Hell. It's not fair if we're suddenly more advanced than anything else, is it?"

Adrien shrugged. "But aren't you—you're literally celestials beings. I would've thought you'd have everything up there."

"There's no unicorns or mermaids, sadly," she fondly informed him. "If you really want to know, we took it in turns to guard the main gate at first. We had multiple districts, so you could choose where you wanted to live from picking from what looked aesthetically pleasing to you."

"But it's always warm," he said, tilting his head curiously. "How different could it really be?"

"Very," she replied, a smile on her lips as she remembered the different colours of the plants in the areas that she visited for check-ups. "It was kind of like visiting different countries down here, I guess? Humans liked to hold onto their cultures despite being dead, so those that were alike used to band together and live in the same area."

He wetted his lips. "But not any more."

"No," Marinette agreed, closing her eyes. "Now it's—I'd class it as a town? The paths are cobblestone, the architecture is kind of all over the place because of our different preferences, but it's full of green and plants that wouldn't all be in bloom down here. It's... lively."

Quietly, he asked, "When I die, are you going back up there?"

She didn't open her eyes to look at his expression. "I don't know."

"You already missed out on years with your sister," he said in a whisper. "And Luka. You're not—you're not going to do anything stupid, are you?"

"Like go on a murderous rampage?" Marinette laughed. "No, of course not."

He didn't say anything.

It hadn't completely come across as a joke, then.

She cleared her throat before sitting upright, finally meeting his gaze as she brushed some stray hair behind her ear. "I don't want to think about what would happen if you died. Can we—let's move on, okay?"

His smile didn't reach his eyes. "We've got to think out options if you're going to smuggle me into Heaven."

"Yeah, about that," she murmured, breathing out a loud sigh as she slumped onto the table, resting her head in her arms, turned to the side so she could gaze up at him. "The gate's out. We kept turning humans away for so long that it—well, kind of stayed shut? I wouldn't know how to work around that in the first place, so I thought getting the council to agree to let you in would be a good place to start."

"...You never mentioned this," he said, incredulous.

"Surprise?" Marinette let out a forced laugh. "It's not _that_ much of a big deal."

He asked, "Can't you jump over it?"

"It doesn't work like that," she replied with an exaggerated sigh. "It's like—nothing over it? You can't stand out there. Only the humans coming in can."

"Okay, so I'll scale the gate," Adrien proclaimed, clenching his hand into a fist. "Put some rope on me when I die or something. It might help."

She laughed.

He huffed. "Well, what's your bright idea?"

Marinette theorised, "Maybe it'll work if I try and phase with your dead body? Who knows. We'll find out when that time comes."

Instead of focusing on the prospect of him being dead, Adrien's smile grew more genuine. "You'll carry me like a princess?"

She grinned. "Babe, I'd carry you like a princess right now if it would make you happy."

He grimaced. "Don't call me babe."

"Yeah, I kind of want to kill myself for even trying that out," she admitted, not embarrassed in the slightest. "Can we forget that happened?"

Purposely making a thoughtful noise, Adrien tapped his finger against his chin before coming out with, "Only if you carry me to bed."

"I might die before we make it." And despite her words, she stood up, gesturing for him to do the same as she stretched her arms out. "I'm literally as weak as I look. I don't have extra strength."

"But if it's hard to hurt you, this shouldn't be too bad, right?" he questioned, taking a step closer and wrapping his arms around her neck with a wide smile. "I'm waiting."

She snorted. "Sure, your highness."

She was struggling before they even made it to the doorway of the bedroom.

Adrien was delighted with the whole experience.

Then, as if to mock her, the following night, he picked her up without trouble and tossed her onto the bed. At her narrow-eyed glare, he simply winked at her in return before flopping down beside her.

"You're an idiot," she accused.

Adrien didn't try and deny it. "But I'm your idiot."

"This is true," she agreed, rolling over to bury her head against his chest. "You're so lucky you have someone like me."

He poked her cheek. "You can't even carry me to bed, how am I lucky?"

She tickled him in retaliation.

-x-

Bridgette was more supportive of her new plan.

Luka was smug, of course.

It turned out when she wasn't threatening whichever angel came her way, she was able to get something done. Luka had volunteered to act as her proxy and get everything prepared for her, so when he phased into her kitchen to say that the council were waiting to see her, she was still in her pyjamas.

The weekend meant that Adrien slept in. She'd wandered out to get a glass of water, and that's when Luka had found her. She'd barely been awake long enough to process what was happening.

"I didn't think it would be this soon," she lamented, rubbing her eyes with her palms in an attempt to be more alert. "I can go like this, right? It won't matter."

"...Are you in his underwear?" Luka questioned, baffled.

Marinette looked down to what she was wearing as shorts. "Yes?"

"I can't guarantee they won't get impatient," Luka admitted, running his fingers through his hair. "Just hurry up, yeah? I'll tell them you're coming."

She gave him a thumbs up.

And with that, she wandered into the bedroom, pulling her off t-shirt and replacing it with her largest hoodie that would cover the underwear she had on after placing the straps around her waist. And after she slipped on her socks, holding her shoes in one hand, she approached the bed to gently nudge Adrien.

He made a sleepy noise.

"I'll be back later, okay?" Marinette murmured, brushing his hair away from his face to press a kiss to his forehead. "See you soon."

He grumbled underneath his breath.

When he was that sleepy, he didn't remember the conversation later when he was fully awake.

She phased up, landing near the centre. Marinette leaned onto a tree for balance as she put her shoes on, patting her hair down and trying to look a little bit presentable.

At least enough time had passed that she wouldn't have pillow marks on her face any more.

The town hall wasn't filled.

No one was sitting when she pushed one of the grand doors open, straining a little to open such a heavy door, and she awkwardly stood there in the doorway for a moment, taking in the sight that she hadn't seen for close to two decades.

It was as lavish as the library; high windows, wooden furniture that was polished and looked to be expensive, and there wasn't a speck of dust in the room despite how little it was used.

There was only six people inside, one being Luka.

"Other two not coming?" she questioned, letting the door close by itself as she walked into the room, footsteps echoing from the silence. "Or are they taking their resignations seriously?"

"They had no interest in taking their positions back," Arlette said as her greeting, expression blank. "Could you not get dressed for this meeting?"

Marinette looked down to her bare legs. "Does that really matter?"

"Hello, Marinette," Ivan offered, looking more board-shouldered than he had before. "I thought the next I'd see you would be with a blade against my neck."

She snorted. "I've never gone for the neck."

"I'm just—going to go," Luka said, pointing to the door and taking a step away. "I'm not needed here, right?"

When there was no complaint, he started to walk away.

Marinette called out, "Coward!"

He waved before exiting through the door.

There wasn't any hard feelings there. If he'd stayed, they wouldn't have considered his opinions on the matter; he was biased towards her and would surely be on her side regardless of how it played out.

She didn't feel tense.

Instead, she didn't shy away from their gazes as she turned her head back to face them, making herself comfortable by sitting on top of one of the tables and placing her hands within the pocket of her hoodie, touching her bandalore for reassurance.

"So," she started. "Will you stop looking like a gang of delinquents if I give my word I'm not going to stab anyone?"

"That depends," Ivan answered, standing out as easily the most muscular of them all. "Are you going to keep it?"

"Yeah, why not?" She started to kick her feet from where they didn't touch the floor from where she was sitting. "I'm here for peaceful negotiations, you know? I tried the threatening way first and it clearly didn't work well."

"You did get two to resign," Théo pointed out with a smile that didn't reach his eyes.

"Théo," she acknowledged, tilting her head. "You... decided to grow a ponytail?"

"And you look like you're wearing a wig," he countered in good humour, always playful and wanting to avoid the heavy topics for too long. "You look like skin and bones, too. Has the surface not been treating you well?"

She snorted. "I'm sure you've been told all about that for now."

"You did spin a pretty tale to me before," Arlette remarked, pushing her chin-length hair behind her ear. "I underestimated your stupidity, it seems."

Marinette laughed. "Hasn't it always been that way?"

They sat down.

Marinette stayed on her table, preferring to keep it informal instead of giving into the stifling looks that were sent her way. The five of them had sat down in their pretentious allotted chairs, and although she'd once occupied one of them, they'd barely taken her opinions seriously.

She'd been too wide-eyed and innocent, wanting the best for the humans.

It wasn't like that any more.

She was the only one from her generation. The closest to her were from the one before; Ivan with his blank expression and muscles, and Clara who valued her time and preferred to do something fulfilling instead of sitting around arguing.

Of all of them, Marinette had the highest amount of kills—but that had never given her total authority.

"I'd say welcome back," Arlette started, already sitting abnormally by having one leg tucked underneath her, the other resting on top of her thigh. "But that's not really what you want to hear, is it?"

"Yeah, no," she confirmed with a smile that wasn't sincere in the slightest. "I'm not planning on returning here any time soon."

"Why are we here, then?" Nadja, the fifth and final council member, questioned with a sigh. "Not that I'm not glad you're back, Marinette, but I already had plans for today. Being dragged here wasn't part of that."

"I'll keep it short," Marinette announced, jumping off the table in a single moment, hands still in her pocket. "My priorities aren't the same as they were before I fell. You can ignore as many calls for help as you want and I won't make complain about it."

Théo's brow furrowed. "Really?"

"Not my concern any more," she stated, rolling her shoulder until it clicked. "I've lived down there for eighteen years and lost any sympathy I had. Not sure if it's my curse, to be honest with you? I haven't found out what it is yet."

She ignored the sympathetic looks at that.

"We've all been down there, either for a few or years," she said, getting straight to the point. "I befriended a pure human while I was there. Protecting him is why I was able to get my status back."

Arlette sighed louder. "We're not—"

"How about you fucking shut up while I'm talking?" Marinette interrupted with a cold look. "I was advised not to resort to violence, but don't forget I have a weapon that can literally kill you right now. I wouldn't feel bad about it."

There was a beat of silence.

She didn't tear her gaze away from Arlette's.

It was Ivan that quietly broke it with the statement, "Violence isn't going to get you anywhere up here."

"Sure, but I bet I could kill at lease two of you before you manage to restrain me," she bluntly replied to that, rocking back on her heels. "Want to find out or are you going to let me talk?"

Théo held up his hands in a sign of surrender. "Now, I'm sure we can—"

"Great," she butted in again, louder that time.

In the time she cleared her throat, none of them spoke.

"I was a joke to you before," Marinette said in a steady voice. There was the ugly feeling of resentment and anger in her chest, but it was nothing compared to how she'd felt when she'd made the decision to fall. "You allowed me here because I was easy and did your work for you, even when you deemed it a waste of time. I killed enough demons to be a token member."

There was no rebuttal to that.

It was the accepted truth, wasn't it? She looked back on her past actions in pity, finding the way she'd tried to push for the safety of humans pointless.

"Now, I've surely killed more demons than all of you combined," she stated, leaning back and putting her weight on the table. "My actions are purely selfish now. I'm not asking you anything because I feel sorry for the humans any more."

"You're still requesting entrance for one," Arlette pointed out, running her fingers through her hair and looking at the strands instead of at her. "That's presumptuous, don't you think? The gate hasn't been open for centuries."

"Because our decisions made it that way," Marinette responded, taking her hands out of the her pocket and grasping onto the edge of the table. "I'm not the only one to feel indebted to a human. Is it so much to ask for one allowance?"

"We agreed not to share our space," Théo awkwardly pointed out, scratching his cheek. "That—it's a thing of the past."

With a frustrated sigh, Marinette jumped up and sat down again, restless and impatient from trying to find the right words to articulate her feelings when she hated wasting time on those she disliked.

There was contempt in her voice as she said, "We've been reduced to one town and some demons consider us a myth because they haven't seen us for their entire lifespan. Is this really how we wanted it to be?"

Clara's facial features twisted in distaste. "Why should we care what demons think?"

"It's not just the demons," she responded, a frown on her lips. "The human hunters barely know of our existence either. I found some with our weapons in their possession and they had no idea of where they were from."

"And how is that a problem?" Ivan questioned gruffly. "Any human that has been informed about us is because of a careless decision. They shouldn't be told."

"Like they shouldn't be told they have to specifically think that their attacker's a demon to call us?" Marinette retorted. "The lucky ones that stumble of that trail of thought are ignored because we've shut our doors up here."

Nadja asked, "I thought you didn't care for this any more?"

"I care that I'd tried to get your attention for weeks as a human using those methods," she muttered. "How do you expect any fallen angels to recover when the surface is so disconnected from us? It's no wonder I'm one of the only ones to return."

Arlette blandly replied, "Falling was your decision. Do not blame us for your mistakes."

"I blame how pitiful I was before," Marinette responded to that without missing a beat. She crossed her arms, feeling the outline of her blade underneath her clothing. "I'm not here to cry and try to get your sympathy. All I want is to change how we function up here."

"What would you do, then?" Clara questioned, brushing her long brown hair over her shoulder, putting her elbows on the table before resting her chin in her open hands. "You were on the council for a reason, Marinette. We valued you for how good you were at fighting."

But it was only valued when they didn't have to do the work, wasn't it?

When they weren't the ones in charge, everyone answered calls. It was their responsibility to try and keep the violence on the surface to the minimum, but that changed over time.

She'd changed, too.

"I'm not the only one to care about a human before," she reminded them. "Why not allow us entrance for one each? It wouldn't overcrowd us and the town would gradually expand as humans are selected."

Nadja laughed. "That's your idea?"

"Well, you're not going to agree to let one human in, are you?" she countered with a frown.

Théo fiddled with his hair, pulling the ponytail to tighten it up. "And what of those that _don't_ want humans in here again? The presence of any would be a nuisance."

"Then, the humans can go to an abandoned town," Marinette suggested. "They've been empty for so long, but that would change as soon as anyone moved in there."

"That's ridiculous," Arlette rejected, leaning back in her seat with a scowl present on her face. "That would only divide us in the end. It was a unanimous decision to all move to one district and live here."

It was clear that the proposal wasn't getting through to them.

And why would it? Marinette's quest to protect humans in the past hadn't swayed them in the slightest, and even the angels that weren't involved with the council barely responded to the calls that came through. And as demons continued to make a ruckus on the surface, the calls must've increased—

But she couldn't hear them any more.

Falling had cleansed her of that burden.

If she'd returned and still heard them, she would've ignored them. They weren't important to her any more, not when she'd experienced their culture and been looked down upon for being a starving child on the streets for so long.

"So," she started softly, jumping down from the table. "It's a no?"

Arlette's laugh didn't sound forced. "Of course it's a no."

"That's a pity," Marinette remarked, one hand slipping beneath her hoodie as though she was going to scratch her side. "You're not all going to meet me here again, are you?"

"Probably not," Clara replied, standing up and smoothing out her clothes. "If we're done here, can I get going? I really do have plans."

The resentment was still there.

She'd managed to redeem her status and did what countless others had failed to do, and yet, all she felt was resentment towards them. Marinette could vaguely remember the times they'd asked her about her day, engaged in small talk when she brought in cakes and pastries that she'd made with her sister for their meetings.

Marinette breathed out.

Heaven wasn't any better than the surface, but the difference was that Adrien wouldn't be with her.

All the time she'd spent with them, the feelings she'd felt were miniscule when compared to how Adrien made her feel.

She'd been happier with Chloé than having a seat on the council, feeling strangely helpless despite how it was supposed to be a position of power.

It was a split second decision.

Her blade travelled across the room, slicing through Arlette's skull without resistance. There was a sickening crunch before the deceased body slumped back against the chair, and Marinette used the bandalore to wrap around the handle once more.

With a flick of her wrist, the blade swung to the side and cut through Nadja's torso before returning to her open hand in a movement that wasn't clumsy in the least.

The other three had jumped up, startled and slack-jawed as they stared at the bodies.

Nadja's upper-half had fallen onto the floor, the dripping from her blood seeming to echo in the empty room.

Adjusting her grip on the sword, bandalore held in the other, Marinette asked in a steady voice, "Are you going to agree with me now?"

Clara was crying.

"What—" Théo choked out, hand outstretched as if to touch Arlette before he withdrew it, holding it against his chest as he couldn't tear his eyes away from the corpse. "_Why_?"

None of them were trying to fight her.

That realisation was a little upsetting.

"Why?" Marinette repeated with an amused breath leaving her.

Ivan's hands were shaking.

Killing those that she'd spent centuries with was nothing in comparison to pressing the blade into her best friend's chest. She could still remember the warmth of her blood and the way Chloé had barely fought back, accepting the betrayal with scorn.

Chloé had trusted her and that was the reason for her downfall.

"This council is bullshit," Marinette stated, watching as Clara buried her face in her hands and sobbed, unable to cope with the situation. "We've never settled anything with violence before, so it's about time this happened, don't you think?"

"You _can't—_"

The bandalore worked on angels.

It turned out it couldn't strangle them or apply enough pressure to hurt them like it could with others, but she was able to wrap it around Ivan's torso and tug to pull him forward until he landed on the floor, disorientated from the sudden movement.

Marinette stabbed her sword through his chest.

"Can't?" she repeated, twisting the blade and jerking it so it would cut through his heart.

There was no guessing where his other heart was located; rather, his body grew lifeless and slumped over in a matter of seconds. Marinette placed her foot on his shoulder and pulled her sword out, blood splattering on her legs from the violent movement, and she kicked him to fall on his back for the other two in the room to see.

Théo phased away.

But Clara—

Clara was panicking, breaths coming out as wheezes.

Marinette walked up to her slowly, her sword not long enough to trail across the floor with it hanging down by her side. It had unsheathed in similar length to the knives she used to throw in Chloé's home when they bickered.

Clara was older than her, and yet, as she looked at her, she didn't feel any pity.

If she wouldn't handle a little violence, what good was she?

"I won't kill you if you're useful to me," Marinette announced, placing her bandalore in her pocket to free up a hand to reach out and grasp onto Clara's hair. With a jerk, tugging at the roots, she made Clara look up at her through teary eyes. "Spread the word that the council's disbanded, will you? I'll come back in a few days for a follow-up."

Clara was too busy having a panic attack to answer her.

Marinette let go of her hair before phasing back to the surface.

The sight of the bathroom she shared with Adrien was a welcome one.

She turned the tap on, washing the blood off of her blade before slotting it back underneath her clothes. Opening the door, she followed the noise down the hallway to see Adrien sitting with Luka at their island counters, sat on the stools and chattering with a mug in front of each of them.

Luka hadn't ran away from her meeting for no reason, then.

When Adrien turned to look at her, he gasped, scurrying out of his seat and immediately crossing the room to frantically ask, "Are you hurt? What happened—"

She'd forgotten about the blood that had splattered on her.

"It's not mine," she interrupted him to say.

And with that, Adrien hugged her tightly, pouring his emotions in his actions. "You scared me there."

"Sorry," she murmured, wrapping her arms around his waist and leaning into his touch. "I didn't mean to."

"I... guess it didn't go well?" he questioned, uncertainty clear in his tone. "You had a meeting, right? Unless you... you came down here and, well, had some fun?"

She snorted. "Fun?"

"Sorry, killing isn't fun," he replied, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. "You should've woken me up."

"I didn't want to," she admitted. "You would've just worried."

Adrien responded with a laugh, "I worried when Luka woke me up by tripping over Plagg."

"I forgot about him," Luka offered as his first words since she'd arrived. "If you two are quite done fawning over each other, I'd appreciate it if you filled me in on what to expect when I go back home."

"Yeah..." Marinette trailed off, pulling back so she wasn't chest-to-chest with Adrien any more. "About that."

Luka's expression was blank. "Yes?"

She shifted her weight on her feet. "I might've... not followed the plan."

"What happened?" Adrien questioned, looking down at her with such concern that she had to avert her eyes.

It wasn't shame that she was feeling.

Marinette didn't regret her reckless choice, but she knew that he'd be disappointed in her.

But if she lied, he'd find out about it another way. She'd hated being in the dark and not knowing what was going on back when she was human, let alone how frustrating Fu had been about revealing information to her.

She wasn't going to do that to him.

Taking a step away from him, seeing as his expression crumpled from the sudden distance between them, Marinette quietly said, "I didn't keep my word."

"Oh," Adrien whispered.

Luka's reaction wasn't the same. "What does that mean?"

She wetted her lips. "I killed three of them."

There was silence.

Marinette grimaced, running a hand through her hair as she waited for them to react.

And as Adrien reached out and put a hand on her arm, a sympathetic move that didn't fit the emotions she was feeling at all, there was concern clear on his face. He was worried about her instead of scorning her for her bad decisions.

Luka breathed out audibly. "What did you do?"

"They told me no," she replied, turning her head to meet his gaze, not shying away. "I had to do something about it."

There was no overwhelming feeling of grief that three people she'd known for centuries had died by her hand. They'd never been close, sure, and the lack of sympathy she had for them wasn't a surprise any more. She'd become desensitised to hearing the person on the other end of her sword beg or wheeze in pain.

It didn't matter to her.

Luka's eyes were wide. "You had to—to kill them?"

She replied to that with a simple, "What's wrong with seizing control if I can?"

"Marinette—" Luka cut himself off with a pained-sounding sigh, brushing his hair away from his face. "This has never happened before. Did you even—did you think this through at all?"

She didn't flinch away. "Revolutions happen for a reason."

"You think this is a revolution?" Luka questioned, raising his voice. In reaction to that, Adrien took a step forward, putting his body in front of her as if to shield her. "You've committed an unthinkable sin. Do you even realise what this will do to the rest of us?"

"We're hardly above sin," Marinette muttered, wrapping her arms around Adrien's waist and hugging his back, leaning her head to the side so she could see around him. "It's about time something changed up there. You can't fault me for finally doing it."

Luka's voice cracked as he said, "You killed your own kind."

"So what?" she retorted. "We die anyway! I'm not the only one to fall because life up there is so stagnant and unfulfilling."

"You came _back_!" Luka all but shouted, looking so frazzled and upset that she couldn't help but feel a pang of guilt as he took a step forward, gesturing abruptly towards her. "I helped because I thought we could solve this peacefully—"

"Peacefully?" she questioned, straightening up and retracting her embrace from Adrien to stalk forward, pushing Luka's shoulders so he stumbled back. "I did what I thought was necessary when they laughed in my face. Did you think I was going to walk out of there empty-handed?"

Adrien tried to say, "Maybe we shouldn't—"

"I thought you'd still be loyal!" Luka exclaimed, hands moving along with his words. "This—I can't deal with this."

And with that, he phased away.

Marinette stared at where he'd been standing blankly.

It hadn't occurred to her that those she trusted wouldn't see her side, let alone stick around to _hear_ it. Luka had flinched and looked close to throwing up at the mention of what had happened.

And yet, Adrien was by her side.

He wasn't pulling away in horror at what she'd done. Instead, he was approaching her slowly, gently reaching out and calling her name softly. And as he brushed her hair out of her face, cupping her face and making it so she had to looked up at him, his smile didn't reach his eyes.

"Are you okay?" he asked quietly.

He wasn't going to leave her.

He wouldn't.

Adrien was all her reason for everything. All she'd done was for his benefit, to try and make his life easier. The age he'd lived to was almost unknown for pure humans, something she wanted to keep going so he'd grow up and live a happy life with wrinkles adorning his face.

She leaned into his touch.

-x-

Marinette believed she'd done the right thing.

Her sister had a different opinion.

The reason she was able to find out where she lived was because Luka phased down with Bridgette in his arms, landing in their living room when no one was home. Adrien had wandered into the apartment first when they'd gotten back from classes, taken off his shoes and padded into the kitchen calling out Plagg's name.

As soon as he'd seen who was there, he'd looked over his shoulder and stuttered out, "I-I think we should come back later, yeah? I forgot something. Let's go get it."

They hadn't made it out.

And by the time Bridgette and Luka left, they still didn't agree with her decision.

Heaven wasn't in chaos, but it was a close thing.

News of the deaths had spread quickly—Clara had been conscious enough to realise what she'd said and tearfully wheezed it out at the first person she ran into, the words becoming skewed and twisted the more it was whispered about. The story had changed, a tragic tale being spun where Marinette was nothing but the villain.

Was it wrong?

She didn't care.

It was necessary.

The council had been in control for so long and all it had caused was for them to be cut off with the surface and shut everyone out. The life up there was what humans aspired for—to be endlessly looked after without having to lift a finger—but when there was only the same people to share it with, it became mundane.

It had always been for humans before, hadn't it?

Angels were supposed to protect them, to guide them into the afterlife if they were worthy and settle them in with the rest of the population up there, giving everyone a roof over their heads and provide everything that they could ever want.

Was it so wrong that she wanted that for one, not the others?

Surely, there had to be others that felt the same way as her.

Bridgette was taking the brunt of the anger of their people because they were related.

There was only so much that words could hurt; punches and cuts, if they resorted to trying to use weapons, wouldn't last long and would have barely any effect in the first place. It was juvenile to resort to violence when there was so little effect.

While she'd grown up to ignore petty remarks and whispers about her, Bridgette had never experienced it that badly before.

"It's words," Marinette pointed out with a furrowed brow. "It does nothing to you."

If anything, that made her sister angrier at her.

A lot of angels were avoiding Heaven because they were scared of her.

Marinette didn't know whether to be flattered by that or not.

Then again, if it had been back before she'd fallen and she'd been informed that an angel was going around slaughtering the council members—the only form of authority they had—she would've been terrified, too.

Maybe she should've told Clara more for her to pass on.

"Marinette," Adrien murmured, drying her hair gently with a towel after she'd showered. "Are you happy?"

Instead of turning around to see his expression, she fiddled with the hairbrush in her lap, plucking out their hairs that had mingled together. She never would've imagined that they're be so intertwined that they shared a brush along with one tube of toothpaste.

She quietly asked, "Why are you asking?"

With a tap to her shoulder, Marinette handed the brush over to him as the towel was folded and placed on the bed beside him.

"Things have been a little... crazy lately," he replied, running his fingers through her hair before using the brush. There was confidence to his actions after doing it so many times in the past. "You know you can talk to me, right?"

They'd been avoiding the subject.

Adrien hadn't openly disagreed with her actions; he'd changed the subject as soon as Luka had disappeared, prompting her to shower and change into new clothes instead, and it was easy to tell that he was nervous from how quickly he spoke.

But with the days that followed, he acted normal.

He held her close, pressed soft kisses to her skin, and tugged her back into bed when she tried to wake him up in the morning. Adrien stayed glued to her side in classes, passing up offers to have lunch with others when he wanted to spend time with her instead, and he was never shy about telling anyone that he loved her more than them, so that was why he wanted to be together.

She wetted her lips. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"I do if you do," he answered softly, tucking her hair behind her ears smoothly. "I can't hold you to human standards, right?"

She laughed weakly. "Does that include murder?"

"Marinette." His hands didn't still. "If you think what you're doing is right, I'll—I'm with you. I can't judge you when I'm just—I'm human."

It was that that had her clenching her hand into a fist. "You're not just a human."

"But I am," he replied in a whisper. "I have no idea what goes on up there, so why should I judge it? My kind aren't exactly peaceful."

She cleared her throat. "You asked me not to kill anyone."

"It's your world, not mine," he said in response to that, running the brush through her hair once more before he started to braid it. "You're the ones in charge, aren't you? I'm nothing compared to you when we think about it like that."

She didn't hesitate to say, "You're not nothing."

"That's sweet of you," Adrien said, smile obvious by his tone of voice. "I hope you continue to think like that."

"I will," she stubbornly replied. "No one's going to change my mind about that."

"Can you—" Adrien cut himself off and breathed out audibly. "Will you tell me what's going through your mind? I just—I want to understand you."

And so, she did.

Adrien patiently listened to it all.

He didn't criticise her or call her a violent idiot acting on instinct. Adrien asked about her feelings, quietly prodded and questioned to get her to elaborate and go into details about the past and how the council used to function—

And through it all, he was kind.

"Do you not care?" she questioned, eyes stinging from the tears that were beginning to gather. "I'm—this is something you'd never do."

"No," he replied back, holding her hand and gently tracing patterns into her skin with his thumb. "We're different people—beings, if you want to be that specific. My choices will never be the same as anyone else's."

She laughed wetly. "That's downplaying it a bit when I'm literally trying to overthrow my government."

"From what you've told me, it's a long time coming," he murmured. "I don't agree with how you're going about it, but in a way, you're trying to make Heaven go back to functioning how it did before, aren't you?"

"For selfish reasons."

He smiled, dimples showing on his cheeks. "Does that matter?"

Everyone else seemed to think so.

But if explaining herself made it so he looked at her with such a soft expression, she was reassured that she wasn't aspiring to be a tyrant for no reason. There were angels that were hiding on the surface in an attempt to avoid her, but all that mattered was the way he kissed her with such emotion, holding her close and whispering how much she meant to him into the dark of the night.

He made her promise not to go back to Heaven dressed in his underwear again.

Marinette felt the need to point out, "If it makes you feel better, I didn't have the time to brush my teeth either."

He laughed until all that came out were wheezes.

She was dressed in the same clothes she'd worn to class; oversized sweatshirt, ripped jeans, and trainers that had a faint bloodstain on them. Adrien didn't put up any resistance when she said she was going to go up for a visit, simply kissing her cheek and wishing her luck with what she wanted to accomplish.

The town centre was empty.

Marinette wandered over to the town hall, pushing open the heavy doors and was greeted by a clean and tidy space.

She wasn't sure why she expected anything different.

Heaven still functioned the way it had even after the murders—it wasn't something monumental or life-changing, yet she'd expected there to be some kind of evidence that she'd committed the unthinkable in their home.

The first angel she came across phased away at the sight of her.

Marinette couldn't help but laugh.

It—it was so ridiculous, wasn't it? She'd been strong before, stubborn and convinced she was doing the right thing by devoting her time to killing as many demons as she could, but as soon as she laid a hand on one of her own kind, that was when the reaction towards her was warranted.

If they were only going to turn away at the sight of her, how was she supposed to get their attention to _talk_?

It was a little frustrating.

With that thought in mind, Marinette turned on her heel and walked in the direction of her sister's home. Instead of phasing into the living room and letting herself in as she usually would do, she knocked on the front door and waited to see if she was home.

Bridgette's expression when she realised it was her wasn't a happy one.

"Hang on," Marinette said, wedging her foot in the doorway before it could slam shut in her face. "I'm not here to fuck shit up again, okay?"

"Talk _normally_," her sister demanded in a hiss. "That doesn't even make sense!"

"Look," she said, using her hand to open the door further without taking a step inside. If her own sister was having such a negative reaction to her, she wasn't going to make it any worse by imposing on her. "I need you to spread that I want humans back here, okay? I can't do it because no one's sticking around to actually talk to me."

Bridgette's scathing response to that was, "I wonder why?"

"Oh, get over it," she snapped. "You can't tell me you don't want more people here. You loved visiting the other districts."

"That's in the past—"

"I'm redoing it!" Marinette exclaimed, talking longer than she'd intended. "This—it's about due time this happened, don't you think? I'm not the only one to make painful choices before."

Bridgette bristled. "This was a choice, was it?"

"Nothing would've happened if I left it at talking," she retorted, running a frustrated hand through her hair. "Look, I—I'm not about to go around and just kill everyone, okay? I want to know who's on my side and who's not. The gate isn't going to open if the majority is against it now."

Bridgette sighed. "Barely anyone's talking to me right now."

"Shit talk me if you want," she replied, perking up since it hadn't been immediately rejected. "Tell everyone that you're done with me if that helps."

There was a moment where they just looked at each other.

Marinette wasn't sure what her expression was, but it made Bridgette's shoulders slump as she quietly asked, "What are you doing?"

"I'm making Heaven how it used to be," Marinette answered, standing up straight and crossing her arms. "Kind of."

"Kind of," Bridgette repeated, doubtful. "Except you're not planning on letting everyone in, are you?"

"And overcrowd us in a matter of weeks from how the human populations overshadows us?" She made a disgusted noise. "No, the districts would fill and become endless. There needs to be some kind of system to it."

"I can try?" It came out sounding like a question. "I can't promise good results, but if you... if you don't show up for a while, it might die down."

She held her hands up in a sign of surrender. "I'll stay down, then. You know where to find me."

"You can't come up here," Bridgette reaffirmed, looking straight into her eyes. "People are scared of you."

She almost rolled her eyes. "Yeah, okay."

And she stuck to that.

She focused on her time with Adrien instead; treasuring the moments where he brushed her wet hair, the two of them cuddling on the sofa while lamenting about their essays that were due, and all the small moments that they shared. She was particularly fond of how he'd fiddle with her fingers during class, idly doodling in his notebook at the same time, clearly zoning out.

She showed him her notes afterwards.

Valentine's came and they realised too late that they didn't have a vase.

Rather than venturing out and buying one last minute, Adrien improvised by using a glass, using scissors to cut off most of the stem to fit the flowers into it. They ended up with three glasses filled with flowers spread out across the apartment.

Plagg knocked the one in the kitchen over.

They weren't surprised.

It was weeks before any angel turned up in their apartment.

Luka came when they were leaving for classes in the morning. Marinette wasn't about to let Adrien walk in the city alone, no matter how often he'd walked the same path and could recognise each house.

It was somewhat coldly that she told him to come back later.

Luka nodded, phasing away without a word.

Adrien jabbed her in the side.

"What?" she muttered, adjusting her jacket.

"Be nice," he scolded her, going as far as to waggle his finger in her direction. "You're not going to get anywhere by being mean to your friends."

She snorted. "I'm sorry, when did you become my mother?"

"I adopted you," he declared, haughtily raising his head and making the height difference between them known. "Respect your elders."

"Technically—"

Adrien laughed. "Shut up!"

When Luka came back, it was with a list in hand.

It was oddly reminiscent of how Chloé used to give her a list of who to kill—except it had less information.

"This is great and all," she started, eyes scanning over the page. "But I barely remember who anyone is here? I need something more to go off."

"...What do you expect me to do?" Luka responded with a sigh. "I'm not going to take a picture of everyone that's against you or something. That's—that's a bit extreme, don't you think?"

She raised her eyebrows. "That's where you draw the line?"

"Don't be ridiculous," he said, pushing the sleeves of his shirt up. "This—it's already stirring up trouble. If you start trying to—to, I don't know, _catalogue_ people, it's going to get worse."

"What do you want me to do, then?" she questioned, tilting her head. "I'm not going to suddenly disappear and let everything go back to the way it was before. There's no council right now."

"There's two members," Luka countered. "Except... Clara's still really upset and thinks it's her fault? And Théo thinks you're out of your mind."

It was a joke when she said, "I should get rid of them, too."

"No!" Luka exclaimed, loudly protesting that. "That—that's a terrible idea. Please, do not do that."

She sighed. "I was kidding."

"Yeah, that's a bit hard to tell," he muttered. "Keep the list and I'll—I'll try and smooth things over, okay? Bridgette's helping."

With a click of her tongue, she asked, "I'm being banished again?"

"Keep away," he advised.

It was frustrating that she was suddenly being pushed out.

Although it made sense to them that keeping her away from Heaven would stop angels panicking at the sight of her, Bridgette and Luka could only do so much by themselves. They were on better terms with everyone than she was, but they wanted peace rather than achieving her goals.

Peace had never gotten them anywhere before.

She studied the list she'd been given, frowning and trying to recall the faces to the names that were there. There wasn't anyone that came after her generation, of course, but it had taken her months to remember all the names of her class-mates, let alone people that she hadn't had a proper conversation with for decades.

It was her problem.

Marinette had started it all, so why was she sitting idly and letting others deal with it?

The first home she visited was Aurore's.

The only thing she could think of to stop the other from phasing away on instinct was to stab the sword through Aurore's chest; an injury that wasn't life-threatening, but phasing away could potentially cause it to be aggravated.

For once, her idea was simple.

"Do you want humans here?" Marinette asked.

And when she got a no, the blade sliced through the heart.

Aurore's lifeless body slumped over to the floor.

For a moment, Marinette wondered what happened with the bodies. Heaven cleaned up the dirt and mud that was tracked in when the day reset—but what about a fresh body?

She needed to ask about that.

At the next door, she rang the bell, repeating the process over.

It took three doors before she got the first yes. Marinette stilled in surprise, a smile curling on her lips, and she patted their shoulder with an insincere apology before she yanked her sword out.

They phased away as soon as she'd stopped stabbing them, but not before she could see their tears.

Was it so bad?

Their life had only gotten worse after they'd been abandoned. They'd turned against the one thing they were supposed to do—to protect humans—when there was no higher being to encourage them any more. Without someone making the rules that they couldn't disobey, it had crumbled and made it so over the years, their numbers had dwindled down until there was only one district left.

Hell had been abandoned because it wasn't liveable any more.

What if the same happened to them?

There was no direction any more.

It had spiralled into selfishness, the gates being closed due to how the majority felt bitter from having to look out for pathetic beings that did nothing in return—

Marinette could barely remember how it was to live alongside them in Heaven.

When she'd been young and growing up, it was only a few decades before they were abandoned and humans were banished afterwards. The memories were hazy, barely-there and hard to visualise, and the years that followed were in much the same state.

It was hard to remember that summer with Adrien.

She wondered where the trope of mythical beings having perfect memories came from.

When a man in a suit answered the door, she recognised him.

He was the angel from the park that she'd met with Nino and Chloé. He could've been the trigger to finding out who he was if only he'd recognised her—

It was vindictive when she killed him.

If she'd been with Adrien, the angel wouldn't have spared him.

It was out of fondness for her memory that Luka hadn't slaughtered him.

What was wrong with changing how it was?

She'd been feared before; had demons whispering about her when she'd let them get away to pass on the word of what she'd do if they hurt anyone else, had vented her frustrations of failing to connect with people through violence—

And yet, her own kind had never looked at her in horror before.

What was the difference?

Angels weren't above everyone else—they were corrupt and cruel in their own ways, and so was she.

Marinette worked her way through, single-minded and not uttering more than her opening questions once they were impaled and unable to phase away. The whimpers of pain and pleas to spare them weren't new to her ears—but it wasn't a demon that had happened to stumble across her or looked at Adrien twice.

But if an angel saw him, they would've done the same, wouldn't they?

It was said that they should kill any pure humans before demons could get their hands on them, a sacrifice to keep demons under control.

But from what she'd seen, they didn't step out of line. They were too focused with attacking each other, or trying not to aggravate others, to potentially take over the surface.

For as many demons there were, no more were being created.

They had endless lives; resets with less and less powers, sending them further down to the bottom and rendering them useless amongst their peers when they couldn't bend cutlery with their human strength.

She'd learned from their lifestyle.

Marinette had lived side-by-side with a demon willingly before she'd known about her past—she'd been accepted and taken under wing to learn about the harsh side of the world while she'd willingly participated in it.

Who was she to leave those lessons behind?

Angel had been sat in their endless selfishness, staying out of reach and considered a myth to most.

She was doing what was necessary.

She wasn't wrong.

Marinette continued, her breaths coming out steady, hands not shaking as she struck. Her actions were on repeat, actions fluid and familiar to her, and another crumpled body only meant that she was weeding out the weak, getting rid of those that didn't agree with her ideals.

It was simple.

And when she used her bandalore to pull an angel out of the air who'd decided to fly and attempt to warn their neighbour—

She didn't wait for their answer.

They'd lived for so long doing what they wanted, selfish and shut off—

And she'd been the same, hadn't she? Marinette hadn't truly cared about the humans on the surface more than she would a pet.

At least, that's what she'd assumed before she met Plagg.

She cared about Plagg more than any human from her past.

It was different when she had Adrien's smile in mind, Alya's stubborn kindness in befriending her, and all the other experiences that she'd had when she was human. The majority of them were scum in her eyes and she didn't care what happened to them, but a select few had wormed their way to being endearing.

Knowing that they were setup for suffering in the afterlife despite their life choices left a bitter taste in her mouth. Although it was worse for Adrien due to his inevitable fate, she didn't forget about the others.

If others had cared so deeply for humans before, why did they give in so easy?

She never would've agreed to it if it had only just be proposed.

The system was flawed and if she was the only one willing to do something about it, why did it matter that she was feared?

It was the right thing.

She wasn't _wrong—_

Her mindset didn't change.

Luka's list didn't help her.

She wasn't taking names, awaiting their life story and questioning their beliefs—she was holding their life in her hands and demanding an answer to one question to see whether they were worthy to stick around. There was already so little of them in comparison to when they were in their prime, so what was the loss of getting rid of the bad ones?

They didn't do their jobs any more.

All they did was laze around and spend their time as they wished, getting everything handed to them in a home that supplied all the things they'd ever wanted. There was no hunger pains that had them clutching their stomachs late in the evening, no bite from the cold where their teeth rattled as they shivered—

It was everything people aspired for, wasn't it?

And yet, she'd despised it.

The life wasn't worth living if she didn't have someone to share it with.

Another one vehemently rejected the question, spitting on her.

Marinette drew that death out, looking in their eyes as she pressed the blade in deeper.

It had been her on the other end before; human and helpless against a demon. She'd persisted and managed to save herself—

She could only rely on herself, couldn't she?

Yanking her blade out of the body and causing blood to splatter onto her, Marinette stared blankly down at the corpse, the festering anger roaring in her chest and spurring her on. Of all the ones she'd killed, none had tried to fight back past attempting to push her.

It made her question how often they fought demons if they were so pitiful against weapons that could actually harm them.

She wanted to _live_.

Did they?

She wanted to know how many fallen had died as a result of neglect when they'd first fell—to know if their infant bodies hadn't been cared for when they'd appeared, left to suffer in the cold and rot from no one lifting a finger to help them.

Marinette had made it through all that.

Despite it, she'd come back and realised how corrupt the system was.

It was a long time overdue.

She told herself that if anyone else had stumbled on weapons that allowed them to do what she did, they'd do the same—that they'd selfishly use them for their own advantage, striking down those that didn't agree.

If it was a bad thing, why would only the sword respond to her?

It changed size to best fit her need, felt light and weightless when she held it, and it didn't do any of that for anyone else. Even Adrien, the most kind-hearted person she knew, hadn't been able to have the same effects with it.

It was proof that she was worth something, wasn't it?

And as time passed, it almost felt like a blur.

Marinette repeated her actions, rocking on her heels as she waited for whoever was home to answer the door, going from one house to the next and making her way down the various streets. The decorations and furniture out front were different for each area, flowers changing according to their wishes, and it almost felt like it was a different place altogether when it was really only down the street.

Adrien would like it.

He'd always wanted to travel more. It was the time and difficulty of keeping him safe that made him so against it—he always said he'd prefer to stay and lounge in bed with her instead of having to get dressed to venture outside, let alone travelling by train a far distance.

There was blood on her hands.

It wasn't her own.

And it was with that in mind that she continued, asking her single question before moving her hand to either strike or rip the sword out. The movement was practised and familiar, the repeated motion coming easier with every stab.

It was nothing in comparison to how she'd suffered before.

The wound would heal without a scar.

Adrien wouldn't.

It occurred to her when she saw the terrified look in another's eyes—

Were they considering her a monster for her actions?

It was inevitable.

Demons had taught her so much in her lifetime, but nothing held a candle to weeding out the weak and maintaining the top spot.

Chloé had always said that power meant everything.

And finally, Marinette was understanding that.

She'd found the way demons killed each other petty and amusing at times, entertained by the off-handed remarks where Chloé informed her of the betrayals that she'd heard about without suspecting that she'd be doing that very thing.

No one was going to tell her what to do when she was the one in control.

She wasn't _wrong—_

The horrified expressions didn't hurt until it was Bridgette standing face-to-face with her.

Bridgette was in front of someone, her hands spread out in an obvious attempt to be protective, and Marinette stood in the doorway, baffled from the turn of events. The knock at the door had been the same as any other before it, but it was her sister opening the door at someone else's home—

She didn't recognise the person behind her well enough to remember their name.

Why was Bridgette look at her like _that_?

She hadn't cared about the pitiful or scornful looks that had been sent her way since she'd been a child on the streets.

And yet, when she saw Bridgette standing there, prioritising someone else and lodging herself between them with an angry slant to her eyebrows, there was no mistaking that her expression was one that wasn't friendly. It wasn't the bright smile that reached her eyes when she greeted her, or tentative and fragile like when they'd first met again.

It had to happen, didn't it?

The reoccurring question couldn't make it past her dry lips.

She didn't say anything.

She didn't take a step further into the home, lingering in the doorway with her sword down by her side, hanging limply with the tip against the floor.

"You can go," Bridgette said, voice surprisingly strong.

It took a moment for Marinette to realise that she wasn't talking to her. Bridgette's friend phased away, allowing Bridgette to straighten out her posture, standing in the stranger's home with a furious expression that wasn't changing with the moments that passed.

She didn't realise her hands were shaking.

It wasn't only anger that she was feeling any more.

Marinette's voice cracked as she asked, "Why are you here?"

Bridgette had to blink to try and stop her tears.

They were the same when they felt overwhelmed.

"I got warned that you were going on a rampage," Bridgette said as her explanation, hands clenched into fists at her side. "You—you really can't trust me, can you?"

"Trust you?" she echoed, facial features twisting in distaste.

"I had things covered!" Bridgette shouted, frustration leaking into her tone. "But you couldn't... you couldn't even give me the time to sort this out, could you? You decided to be a barbarian instead."

Marinette blankly told her, "I'm doing what's necessary."

"You killed them," Bridgette stated, voice shaking as she ran a hand through her hair, roughly gripping at the roots and breathing out audibly. "You—I saw the bodies, Marinette."

She didn't try and deny it.

She didn't say anything.

Bridgette asked in a whisper, "Do you even realise what you've done?"

_Realise_?

She'd been aware all along.

Marinette had been the one to see clearly that things needed to change, and that they weren't going to if all that resulted was a dismissive conversation where she was regarded as the same weak angel that she'd used to be.

"Why—" Marinette inhaled sharply. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

"_Why_?" Bridgette repeated back, incredulous. "You—why do you _think_?"

She stared.

And as Bridgette took a step towards her, hand stretched out as if to reach out and touch her before she paused, deciding against that decision and letting her hand fall down to her side instead.

"You can't come back from this." It was a quiet declaration.

Her grip tightened. "I don't want to."

The only way to describe how Bridgette's expression crumbled was of devastation. "Marinette, please—"

"It had to happen!" she interrupted loudly, stepping into the room. Anger burned in her chest when her sister recoiled away, putting distance between them with wide eyes. "This—this isn't what we were supposed to do!"

"Don't pretend you want to go back to the old ways," Bridgette retorted, talking more confidently than she looked. "You—you're callous. You don't _care_."

"I care more than here," she proclaimed, gesturing to the empty air around this. "This place is just—it's suffocating! It's day-to-day with endless greed of wanting to keep it all to ourselves!"

"Why?" It was barely audible, but the look it was paired with made it cutting. "Why—why would you want to go back to giving everything and getting _nothing _in return?"

Her chest felt tight. "You don't want change."

"No," Bridgette replied, her blinking causing tears to escape her eyes instead of subdue it. "I want you to be happy. If that—if that means allowing humans in, I want to support you but you—you're making this so _difficult_."

"Difficult?" she parroted, an incredulous laugh escaping. "Nothing was going to happen!"

"I had people agreeing with me!" Bridgette exclaimed, slapping a hand on to her chest to emphasise her point. "They were listening! I needed—I needed more time to get an idea of how many would be on board—"

She told her, "I killed the ones that said no."

Bridgette roughly wiped her tears away with her palm.

The silence between them was tense.

Marinette's hand had stopped shaking, but she felt cold. The anger that had been simmering within her was settling down, stomach twisting uncomfortably as she confronted with the grief and disbelief in Bridgette's expression—

But she didn't regret her actions.

It was a matter of who was stronger, wasn't it?

There was no point trying to be superior and above change if they were unable to defend themselves. She'd given them a chance, demanded an answer to her question from almost all of them, but so little were willing to make a difference.

She wondered if the reason they'd been abandoned all along was because they were selfish.

And Marinette—

Marinette knew she was selfish, fuelled by her desire to get what she wanted without anyone standing in her way.

How was she different to any of the others?

The blade in her hand was what made her actions possible.

Bridgette's body shook with her sobs. "What have you done?"

And when she tried to take a step closer, unsure whether it was comfort her or not, Bridgette's reaction was to back away further, the haunted look on her face one that she wouldn't be able to forget any time soon.

She felt sick.

Of course Bridgette would react like that.

Marinette was there covered in blood, blood of the people that had been there for Bridgette when Marinette hadn't, and it was hard to ignore what she'd done when it was splattered across her.

Her sword clattered to the floor.

Bridgette flinched away at the sound.

Her stomach twisted in protest.

-x-

There was no fight.

Marinette had turned her head and thrown up on the floor, narrowly missing where she'd dropped her weapon. Her stomach had heaved painfully, throat burning from expelling the pitiful contents, and she'd coughed and gagged until prickling at the corner of her eyes.

Somehow, Bridgette had moved forward to put a tentative hand on her back in an attempt to comfort her.

They didn't talk.

She was thankful for that.

Shaking, Marinette picked up her sword, slotting it away underneath her clothing and trying to ignore how Bridgette had backed away at the sight of it in her hand again. As soon as it away, her sister came forward and gently put her hand onto her shoulder, asking her to come home.

She didn't say that her home was with Adrien.

Instead, Marinette allowed herself to be tugged through the street, keeping her eyes away from the doors that she'd been through all those minutes ago, staring at the back of Bridgette's head in attempt to dissociate and pretend that nothing had happened.

But she had dried blood on her skin and clothes, wet patches where not enough time had passed, and no one would be able to glance at her and not realise caused her to look that way.

When they made it to Bridgette's, Marinette sat down on the floor, bringing her knees up to her chest and burying her face in them as she closed her eyes and took her breaths slowly.

Bridgette made her tea.

There wasn't any conversation between them.

And along with that, no one came to knock at the door and disturb them. It was silent between them for a long time.

Marinette stayed on the floor until her body protested from how uncomfortable it was.

The first words Bridgette said to her were, "Do you want to use the shower?"

She didn't say no.

It was one thing to look at Bridgette while covered in the bloody evidence and face what had happened and something else entirely to attempt to explain it to Adrien. She knew that he'd jump to conclusions and ask her whether she was injured first, not calming down until he confirmed that she was okay.

Was she okay when she could dismiss her actions so easily?

Bridgette was pale, drowned out by the dark colour of her hair, and she looked like she was going to vomit at any moment.

Marinette came out in clothes that were more colourful than her entire wardrobe.

"We need to talk," Bridgette said at her reappearance, smile not reaching her eyes.

She placed her dirty clothes in a messy pile by the front door, pushing her wet hair off of her face. "Now?"

"Please," Bridgette replied in a whisper, standing up and approaching her cautiously. "I—I need to know what's going on before I can try and smooth everything over."

Her lame response to that was, "I already told you what."

"Marinette—"

"I asked everyone I came across one question," she told her, fidgeting and adjusting the dress she'd plucked out of the wardrobe because of the long sleeves. It was strange to wear a skirt again since leaving school. "If they said they didn't want humans, I killed them. That's all that happened."

Her sister breathed out audibly. "That's it?"

"I didn't ask anything else," she responded.

"Okay," Bridgette mumbled, frazzled as she fiddled with the ends of her long hair. "I might be able to make that work? Mireille saw that you stopped because of me."

She frowned. "Who?"

Bridgette looked at her in disbelief. "The girl I was with just now."

She shrugged.

"Forgetting that for the moment," Bridgette said with a shake of her head. "Please, promise me that you're not going to kill anyone else."

Marinette shifted her feet. "If people disagree, the gates won't open."

"It only needs the majority!" her sister exclaimed. Then, when she realised how loud she'd spoken, Bridgette grimaced and averted her eyes down to the floor. "I can't look at you right now."

"Because I'm a murderer?" she flatly asked. "I was one before all of this."

"It's different," Bridgette insisted, not lifting her gaze off of the floor. "It's—"

The words were cut off with a sob.

Marinette could only stare as Bridgette started crying again, shoulders shaking as she buried her face in her hands, trying to keep her tears hidden as she sat on the floor.

She didn't say anything.

It seemed like minutes on end as she waited for her to calm down. Marinette had sat down on the sofa, tucking her legs underneath her and trying to get at least a bit comfortable in an attempt to settle her stomach.

It wasn't what she'd done that caused her to feel so unsettled; rather, the paleness of Bridgette's skin and the terrified reaction, reminiscent to how horrified Adrien had been of her in the beginning.

But it was a part of their being—they'd been taught from a young age how to fight and best attack a demon, and yet, when it was applied to their own people, that was what was apparently their breaking points.

Punches had been exchanged before in anger, but they had no lingering effect and were barely used when nothing came out of them. The sparring lessons paled horribly in comparison to having a sword that could actually damage them in front of their face.

Perhaps, they'd been too busy enjoying their selfish and lavish lives to keep up their skills.

It wasn't as though she was as good with her skills as soon as she'd regained her memories; it had taken time and repeated actions to have them become familiar and understood again.

It would take more than a few words to have Bridgette understand.

Bridgette didn't look up as she choked out, "You killed my friends."

There was no point denying that, was there?

She didn't regret it.

But saying that aloud would only make things worse, so she kept her mouth shut, arms wrapped around herself, staring blankly down at the floor as the sound of her sister's sobs filled the room.

"We—we grew up with them." Bridgette's voice cracked. "How could you just—just do _that_?"

Her throat was dry. "I barely remember them."

It wasn't the right answer. "That shouldn't mean that you can kill them!"

"Why?" Marinette questioned back, picking up one of the decorative cushions and hugging it against her chest. "We do it to demons all of the time—and humans, too, even if they're not pure."

Bridgette finally looked up. "That's not—"

"Why?" she repeated, eyes prickling as she raised her voice. "We've been raised to kill demons without question, but have you ever actually had a conversation with one?"

Her sister's facial features were twisted in confusion. "Why would I want to?"

"They're not mindless and evil," she responded, tugging on the tassels on the pillow to keep her hands occupied. "They have personalities and quirks just like us."

Bridgette said quietly, "I don't understand."

"We kill them because they reset—it's without consequence for us because we're not there for the aftermath," she said, having to clear her throat to talk clearly. "We've never been in the position where we had to deal with a loved one becoming a weak version of what they used to be."

"What? Now you're for demons _rights—_"

She butted in with, "And we killed pure humans without considering that they have families."

"They're going to die eventually!" Bridgette exclaimed, no sign of friendliness on her face. "It's inevitable, that's—that's what we all decided."

She swallowed. "With that logic, it's inevitable that we'll die, right?"

Bridgette inhaled sharply. "That's not the same thing."

"We were supposed to protect all humans," she countered.

"There's no one here!" her sister shouted back, getting to her feet in an unsteady movement. "There's—we're not being commanded any more! We're free to think and do what we want—"

Marinette pulled harshly on the tassel. "So, why is what I did a crime in your eyes?"

"You knew them!" Bridgette choked out, eyes rimmed in red. "They—they were sad when you disappeared."

"Were they?" It wasn't really a question.

"No one was happy that you left," Bridgette said, hastily wiping her eyes with her hands, making the redness of her skin even worse. It matched her nose. "But this—this isn't how you come back into society."

Her smile didn't reach her eyes. "Who said I want to come back to this?"

"You did—"

"I've never said that," she interrupted, eyes as dry as her throat. "I came to visit you and Luka, but my home's with Adrien."

"Him," Bridgette muttered, a bitterness to her voice as she stared down at the floor. "Why is it always _him_?"

"You know why," she responded without hesitation. "You know what he's done for me."

"And does he know what you've done today?" Bridgette questioned, raising her head and meeting her gaze. "Can you honestly say he'd be proud of you?"

She wetted her lips. "It's not the worst thing I've ever done."

The breath Bridgette took in sounded like a sob. "It's like I don't know you."

And when she laughed, it wasn't sincere. "You're only realising this now?"

"How did this change you so—so much?" Bridgette choked out, harshly rubbing her hand over her face. "You were so sweet before."

Marinette bluntly replied, "I was a pushover."

Bridgette frowned. "You were my pushover."

That was the difference, wasn't it? Marinette had found someone to live for; a reason to live on and gave her something to do each day, and it wasn't the mundane routine that she'd lived through in Heaven.

It wasn't until she'd met a child in the woods that she had a purpose.

"I'm my own person," she whispered, running her fingers through her grey hair. "I'm not—I'm not that quiet girl that no one took seriously any more. I refuse to be her again."

Bridgette coughed wetly to clear her throat. "I took you seriously."

"And now, more do," she pointed out.

"People are terrified of you."

It remained unsaid that Bridgette was scared of her. At any other time they would've been close, sitting beside each other and being within arm's length; yet, Bridgette was across the room, looking vulnerable on the floor and out of reach.

If her own sister treated her like that, she didn't need to imagine how awful people she hadn't spoken to in decades thought of her as.

It wasn't a lie when she said, "Good."

Bridgette couldn't look at her after that.

Between the two of them, Bridgette had always been the one that got along with others better. Marinette had tried in her own awkward way, while her sister had flourished and loved to converse with anyone that crossed her path, finding it easy to make conversation with almost anyone regardless of generation when they were young.

Maybe falling had only made her more bitter and disconnected, emphasising the troubles she once had.

The way they viewed her now was the complete opposite of what it used to be because she'd showed her violence in a different way.

Bridgette hadn't changed in her time away, still filled with happiness and wide smiles—

"If they look at me in horror," Marinette started, putting the pillow down beside her as she stood up. "What's their reaction to you? I know they've been—saying things?"

"I don't know what it'll be now," Bridgette muttered, rubbing at her dry eyes. "But before it was either anger for not talking you out of it, or pity that you've... changed so much."

She approached her slowly. "We can work with that."

Bridgette's brow furrowed. "What?"

Marinette offered her hand out, palm up as though she was approaching Plagg cautiously after he'd scratched her for the first time. "How about we think this through together this time?"

And when Bridgette accepted her offer, hesitantly taking her hand, she smiled.

-x-

It took time.

Marinette kept her word and didn't phase without a specific invitation.

Bridgette and Luka both knew where she lived. Adrien had come up with the great idea of putting both of their schedules on a piece of paper and taping it on the bathroom door so the two would know when they were out, plus it wouldn't be out of place if any of their class-mates came over.

It was better with her keeping away.

Marinette preferred her life on the surface; she continued to pickpocket and lure out the stray demons by flexing her wings, utterly amused by their reactions each time she was sensed, and Adrien ended up betting with her how many she'd find in an evening while he lazed around with Plagg stretched out across his lap.

She had no interest in reconnecting with her kind—that much was obvious from her last visit.

Bridgette was doing her best to smooth things over.

From how Luka told her, it seemed that Bridgette was regarded as the one that stopped her rampage.

"I would've stopped for you, too," she offered, awkwardly patting his shoulder.

Luka rolled his eyes.

She didn't care that there were whispers of her being a monster.

The goal had been accomplished, hadn't it?

The majority that wanted to keep humans out had been erased, corpses disappearing in the morning sun along with the dirt and mess that never had to be cleaned up by hand, and the ones that were left were scared and willing to listen to what Bridgette had to say about what happened.

It turned out that them being related was suddenly relevant when Marinette was considered to be an aspiring tyrant.

It had never been with the intention to _rule—_

Although Luka wasn't as vocal as her sister, others still remembered how she'd latched onto him and how he'd been her only other friend. He said that the conversations never lasted long because he didn't know what to say in return.

He came down to see her more often than Bridgette.

Adrien was always excited to see him, happily bringing up the channel that he'd help Luka start to post on, and Marinette was content to idly listen to the two of them prattle on while she dozed off from the lack of attention being sent her way.

Luka asked to go hunting with her again.

It was weeks after the incident—as they'd started to refer to it as—and while things had been awkward between them at first because of it, Marinette had been dumbfounded at his suggestion.

He pushed his hair away from his face and quietly said, "You wouldn't hurt me, right?"

There was no denying that.

Luka asked her for pointers while they were out.

The change was a little absurd but welcome. She'd enjoyed being out with him before, having someone by her side that understood what was going on and not flinching away, and that time he'd brought his own sword down with him.

Unfortunately, it didn't change size.

It stuck out from where it was covered on his back.

Her response to him questioning if anyone would be worried about the sight of it was, "You're cosplaying if anyone asks."

Avoidance was key when spending time with Luka.

He didn't accuse her of terrible crimes or losing her mind; rather, he updated her on the situation up above, telling her about Bridgette's efforts when she was too busy to come down, and she learned that she didn't mindlessly kill Luka's sister or her girlfriend.

That was good.

What wasn't good, however, was that the homes that had been occupied before had crumbled and disappeared, leaving behind an empty plot with fresh grass underneath that Luka described to be undisturbed.

The spaces between the houses had increased greatly from her actions.

Adrien didn't hate her.

He hadn't asked her what had happened when she'd come back tired in new clothes from her trip, simply suggesting they go to bed after she'd eaten the leftovers he'd left for her from dinner. Adrien hadn't prodded and demanded to know everything, instead waiting for her to come to him.

And when she did, he'd been shocked.

"You—you did that?" he stuttered out, wide-eyed.

Marinette couldn't look at his face any more.

When she'd expected some sort of reprimand, for him to tell her that she was awful and be as torn up as Bridgette had been, he instead pulled her into a hug and whispered, "I'm so sorry."

It was an understatement for her to say she was confused.

Adrien held her close, fingers running through her hair.

Hesitantly, she returned the embrace, burying her face in the crook of his neck for comfort, closing her eyes and leaning into his touch. There weren't any more words between them; gentle touches conveying what they wanted to say instead, and the kiss he pressed to the top of her head was a reminder that he didn't despise her.

The baffling part was when he murmured, "I'm sorry you had to do that."

That wasn't what she'd expected.

And Marinette found she didn't know how to reply to that.

She'd expected to be scolded, to be told that she'd been reckless and cold—

Being faced with concern and sympathy for her actions wasn't even a possibility in her eyes. Adrien had always been caring and understanding, and yet, she'd expected some backlash for her decisions despite her already breaking her promise not to kill anyone.

"You don't have to, okay?" he whispered, petting her hair. "We'll—we can find you someone to talk to—to try and sort this out."

She blinked.

"Demons do all sorts of things, right?" he questioned, talking quickly as he went on a tangent. "It's not too far-fetched to think that one might be a therapist, is it? Oh, but you'd—you wouldn't be able to tell them anything without them trying to kill you. I guess that idea's out."

"Oh," she whispered. "You want me to see a therapist?"

"If you want to," Adrien softly told her. "It might—it's a normal thing. A lot of people do it."

There was one thing, though. "How would I tell a human any of this?"

"That's... true," he admitted with a sigh. "That was a stupid idea, wasn't it?"

"It wasn't," she replied, hugging him tighter for a moment to show her appreciation. "You suggested it because you're worried about me. That's not stupid."

He murmured, "I don't know how much help I'll be, but you can always talk to me."

Marinette smiled into his neck. "I know."

And she did. He was the one that she'd spoken to the most; he'd let her cry when she used to sneak into his bedroom, wiped her tears and offered her too many tissues, and reuniting with her sister and friend wouldn't change that.

They were still struggling to understand her.

Bridgette wasn't angry any more, but she hadn't forgiven her.

Marinette said that she didn't want forgiveness when she didn't regret her actions.

It created distance between them.

When Bridgette told her that people had started to answer calls more, it wasn't an unpleasant surprise. Marinette had stared in confusion, waiting for her to say that it was a joke.

"They're... kind of scared of what will happen if they don't," Bridgette admitted, twirling a long strand of hair around her finger. "I've said that your goals were only to get humans in. Somehow, it came up that that might only happen if we start helping out more?"

She raised her eyebrows. "You're having discussions?"

"Town meetings," Bridgette clarified. "It's... going well? More and more people are returning and coming out. I put up fliers around town so everyone would know the basics and when to meet up at the hall."

It sounded so bizarre.

With a frown, she asked, "And people are listening to you?"

"Yes," her sister replied with a nod of her head. "It helped that Clara gave me her support. Théo's staying silent on the matter, but he's attended every meeting so far."

She couldn't imagine it.

"No one's asking for the council to be reinstated," Bridgette said in a hushed voice. "Not after—not after what happened last time. They don't want to put themselves in a vulnerable position."

She snorted. "That's bullshit."

"It was between me or Luka," Bridgette answered, shrugging. "And we both know how much he hates attention."

It came across sarcastic when she remarked, "Because they think you can stop me."

"They're not wrong, are they?" Bridgette countered. "Anyone else and you'd—you'd do the same as before, wouldn't you?"

She didn't answer that.

There was no reason to when they both knew what her response would be.

"Do you have any other suggestions?" her sister asked. "For what we should do up there? You had to have had a plan of some sort."

Marinette grimaced. "Yeah, about that..."

Her tone was incredulous. "You didn't?"

"Not really, no," Marinette replied, the laugh she let out not sincere. "It—it's never really appealed to me, you know? Leading people. I thought if I sorted out the problem first, it might come... naturally."

Bridgette blandly answered back, "Oh, so you're an idiot."

Her smile reached her eyes that time. "That's common knowledge by now, isn't it?"

Bridgette shook her head in disappointment.

Marinette let her handle it.

The days passed.

Adrien's parents surprised them with a visit one weekend when Bridgette had been in the kitchen giving her updates, so she'd awkwardly introduced the two and continued the lie that Bridgette was her estranged cousin.

It helped that they looked alike.

Bridgette had stayed for almost an hour, trying to answer the questions and appear as human as possible, looking over at her and Adrien wide-eyed and seeking their input when she had no idea what to say—which happened to be often. Marinette ended up talking more than she usually would to spare Bridgette the embarrassment of making up something truly unbelievable, and Adrien's parents were too overjoyed that she'd apparently came out of her shell and opened up more to them.

She walked Bridgette out into the stairwell to allow her to phase away, sharing a tight hug before she disappeared.

Adrien's mother did her hair that time, smacking Adrien's hand away when he tried to help when she found a patch he'd missed the previous time at the back of her head.

It was a nice surprise.

Adrien's father said that she looked healthier.

She agreed.

Her life had a routine again in the strange new city that they'd moved to. Marinette became acquainted with the streets around them, knew her and Adrien's schedule off by heart, and their grades were doing well considering how often Adrien lamenting about having to study, only to panic the last minute before they had an exam or an essay due.

She was happy on the surface.

Falling wasn't the worst thing that had happened to her—it was was a tragic decision that had brought her more happiness than she could've ever anticipated.

The only regret that she had was Bridgette being shoved into a position of authority when she'd never been considered for it before. There had never been a moment where anyone had suggested for Bridgette to be on the council despite her bright personality, not when her skills were out-shined by everyone else.

Marinette had always thought her sister was the better one of the two of them.

Her talent of fighting had turned into others fearing her, while Bridgette's friendliness had held up the test of time. The scornful looks she surely received weren't because of her behaviour, but the association they had with each other.

She wondered whether Bridgette would've flourished if they weren't compared because of their relation.

It wasn't a thought she dwelled on.

The first time she visited Heaven after the incident, it was with Bridgette by her side.

Although months had passed, it didn't stop the terrified looks that were cast in her direction. Bridgette stood straight, leading her through the town centre with her head high, a picture of confidence that she was surprised to see.

As they walked, the amount of people they saw decreased until they were stepping to the outskirts past the houses and buildings, stopping before large gates that had no sign of rust.

It was a sight she hadn't seen for so many years.

Marinette raised her hand slowly, touching the cold metal that she knew wouldn't budge no matter the amount of pressure put on them.

"You sure this'll work?" she whispered.

"I think so?" Bridgette replied, the question clear in her voice. "I mean, if not, why would this even _appear_? Nothing appears for no reason."

The item in question was a new addition that had had Bridgette phasing into her apartment at two at night, startling both her and Adrien awake when the bedroom door opened and hit the wall loudly as the lights were suddenly turned on. Marinette had had the sense not to throw her sword, but she had reached for it on the bedside table.

It was a book.

There was nothing special about it from looks alone.

Yet when Marinette approached and tried to take it off the table, it couldn't be removed. Curious, she peered to the side to see whether it had been stuck down by glue, causing her sister to laugh.

"We've all tried," Bridgette informed her.

She tilted her head. "It just got here?"

"People were excited," was the explanation to that. "It's not often we get new stuff here, you know? Not the stuck to the spot kind that no one wished to appear."

The outside was leather.

She dug her fingernails into the material, leaving little dents that proved that it was really there—that she'd been the one to press into it and make her presence known.

There weren't any fearful eyes on them.

"What is it for?" she questioned.

"I'm not really sure yet," Bridgette replied, brushing her long hair over her shoulder before leaning forward to tap on the leather cover. "I haven't seen it actually do... anything? It's kind of just sitting here right now. But I still thought you'd like to see that something's changed."

She snorted. "It only took a few months."

"It felt more than that," Bridgette said with a sigh. "I've aged so much that I should be the one with grey hair now."

"Well, if you let yourself age—"

"Not happening," Bridgette rejected, shaking her head to emphasise her reluctance. "I like how I look—even if it makes me look older than you."

"Yeah, yeah," she said with a click of her tongue. "I'm small, I get it. I don't need everyone reminding me."

Bridgette laughed. "And who's reminding you of that?"

"_Everyone_!"

"It's a cute look on you," Bridgette complimented, smile reaching her blue eyes. "You're pretty when you don't look like you're going to fall over."

She deadpanned, "You're just complimenting yourself."

Bridgette winked.

The book was blank.

She flipped through the pages, each thick and better quality than what she had in her notebooks, all empty and free of lines that showed where writing was supposed to go.

There was nothing.

She didn't know what she'd expected.

For it to appear at the gates that had been closed for so long—

She suddenly felt small for wanting something impossible. It was too soon for everything to be changed when she'd burned her reputation to the ground and become a nightmare that everyone whispered about when they told each other about unfortunate events.

She slammed the book shut.

And with that, she clenched her hand into a fist, turning on the spot and starting to walk away.

"Marinette," Bridgette interrupted, catching onto her wrist and tugging her back in an attempt to stop her. "Did you—"

She frowned. "What?"

Bridgette held onto her still, using her free hand to open the cover of the book.

The page wasn't blank.

Marinette stared, wide-eyed.

Bridgette's hand that was holding her grew limp, falling down to her side as her reaction was startlingly similar to her own.

"Oh," she choked out in a whisper.

And with that, she laughed, the sound coming out fast and coming across in her own head as hysterical. Marinette crouched down, hands touching her face as her shoulder shook, caught between disbelief and thinking that, maybe, she was still asleep and needed to wake up—

Bridgette whacked the back of her head.

Marinette fell forward, hands on the floor to catch herself, palms touching the dry dirt of the ground. She snapped her head up in surprise, fully intending to ask what the hell was going on, but she started laughing again when Bridgette looked just as incredulous as her.

Wasn't it just so strange?

And when she recovered and stood up, working up the courage to touch the page with her dirty hand, running her fingertips over the imprint of Adrien's name that had appeared, her eyes felt hot.

Marinette wasn't embarrassed about how happy she felt.

It was a reassurance, wasn't it? That no matter how horrendous her actions had been to other people, it had _worked—_

Why else would there be a book at the entrance if it wasn't to let specific people in?

There was no reason to worry any more.

Marinette breathed out slowly.

It was when Bridgette gently put her hand on her shoulder in an attempt to comfort her that she finally burst into tears.

-x-

The first thing she did when she went home was kiss Adrien.

He had no complaints.

She'd held him close, pouring all the things she didn't know how to into the kiss, feeling a mixture of giddy and still in disbelief that she'd actually been able to accomplish her goal. Marinette had been so used to obstacles and having to change her plans that the fact she'd succeeded seemed too good to be true.

So, she didn't tell him.

Not right away, at least.

Although Adrien's name was the first to appear in the book, she wasn't going to let him die any time soon to test whether it truly did what everyone suspected it to.

She stayed on the surface.

Bridgette and Luka came to visit as they did before—Marinette keeping her promise not to phase up to them and cause a panic if she was seen—and they understood immediately when she frantically whispered for them not to tell him what was happening.

Adrien was aware that Bridgette had stepped up to be a figure of authority, so he liked to ask questions about that, skirting around the fact that Marinette was the reason for all the problems up above.

When he asked why Bridgette had barged into their room in the middle of the night before, asking what could've been so important, it was obvious that she was lying.

Adrien had laughed, teasing her with that for days.

And yet, he didn't bug her to tell him.

"You can keep your celestial secrets," he joked, petting Plagg's head and smiling at the purr he got in return. "I clearly can't be trusted with them."

Marinette grinned. "That's true."

"Hey!" he exclaimed, shooting her a glare that looked more adorable than threatening.

She patted his head.

Adrien jutted his lower lip out.

And with the days that passed, she was happy.

Adrien wanted to cry from all the studying they had to do for their end of year exams. Marinette was always the best at waking up when their alarm went up in the morning, waking him up more than an hour before they had to leave to give him time to wake up properly so he wouldn't have half-lidded eyes and constantly yawn when he sat down for his exam.

They celebrated by getting drunk.

Well, Adrien did. Marinette supervised and held the phone up when he called up Alya and Nino, waving happily at the camera and slurring his words as he excitedly told them all about his week—

Their friends were more than happy to hear about how Plagg had dug into the soil of their one house plant and gotten it all over the kitchen.

The plan had been for her to rent a motel room to crash in during the summer since his parents wanted Adrien to return home for that time. She hadn't expected the invitation to be extended to her again, yet his parents weren't having any of it when she told them she'd already thought out where to stay.

The affection she felt for his parents had grown over the years, so much so that the smiles she gave them weren't forced.

She wondered why Adrien's mother had never brought up the night she'd bumped into her with Chloé. There had been no casual question about her friend, no asking how she was doing like Adrien's mother did with Alya, Nino, and the new addition of her fake cousin Bridgette.

Adrien must've told her that something had happened.

It was an understatement, but she appreciated the thought.

Although Bridgette had been to Adrien's home, it wasn't safe to phase into the middle of the living room. Before she'd left to stay with Adrien's family, she'd pulled Bridgette and Luka aside to tell them to text her when they phased down _outside_, saying that she'd do her best to leave, even if it meant crawling out the window in the middle of the night.

The guest room was hers again.

Luka called her out at three o'clock in the morning for a joke, claiming he wanted to say hi, phasing away before she could get a single word out.

She punched him the next time she saw him.

It was worth it from how he burst into laughter.

There was no resurrecting the council.

There were more students in Marinette's university department than there were angels. The numbers had dwindled down so pitifully before, and her actions had only made it worse.

They were outnumbered by demons horribly.

And yet, Bridgette informed her that angels had started to respond to calls, bringing their swords with them instead of phasing down empty-handed—which Luka was embarrassed about when she brought up their first meeting again—proving that they were changing.

It wasn't lost on her that it was fear that accomplished it.

Without it, no one would've looked at Bridgette for advice or instructions; she'd always been the friendly one of the two, the more approachable and more likely to respond in more than a single world. Where Marinette had pushed people away from not knowing how to interact with them properly, Bridgette had welcomed them.

It was paying off.

Marinette wasn't pushing them away for that reason any more.

She had no fond feelings for them. However, hearing that they were changing their ways and following her demands made her in laugh.

It was almost a month into the summer when another name was added to the book.

From what Bridgette could find out, it was the name of an elderly woman that one had befriended at a quiz night, the friendship that followed one that was more akin to a parent and a child despite the age difference.

It wasn't limited to romantic feelings, then.

Marinette wasn't the only one making friends with humans.

It did make her wonder what qualified for the name to appear—without a pen there to mark it down in the first place—since none of the others she cared about had made it onto there. If it was a matter of who she cared about the most, she could understand.

But for an old woman to be someone's first choice?

It would be understandable, maybe, if they didn't know any other humans.

After Adrien's twentieth birthday, she got the confirmation that she needed.

Their second year was going well, with Marinette feeling more comfortable with the new city and pick-pocketing in a new spot that she knew was popular, and Adrien had bought her bright hairbands that he demanded she use, so he put them on the end of her braid whenever he styled her hair.

It felt right being with him.

The short moments where she phased to Heaven made her feel more out of place than ever. From what she could see from peering out the windows of Bridgette's or Luka's home, the houses that had disappeared along with the angels that occupied them had been replaced; flowers, hedges, and fences that were undamaged decorated the previously blank grassy areas.

The first human to be allowed in was the old woman.

According to Bridgette, the old woman wandered into the town centre, following the path from the closed gates—that still couldn't be opened—and kept asking whoever she came across for directions.

The old woman said she'd appeared there, terribly lost.

There was no denying it after that.

Adrien's reaction to the news was to ask, "Is this what you've been hiding from me?"

"Hiding?" she questioned, voice growing higher at the end as she laughed it off, running her fingers through her hair. "I don't know what you're talking about."

He hummed, smile curling on his lips. "I'm sure you don't."

Marinette clicked her tongue in disapproval, putting her hands on her hips. "Your reaction is really fucking lame for such good news."

"Give it a while to process," he replied. "It sounds surreal right now. I don't believe a word of it."

"Will you believe that an old woman's demanding quiz night right now?" she questioned, pointing up towards the ceiling. "The first human in fucking centuries and she's sad that we don't have crossword puzzles."

"You don't even have a newspaper?" Adrien shook his head. "For shame."

"Oh, fuck off," she muttered. "Like you've ever done a puzzle in your life."

His smile showed his teeth. "Figuring out you was a puzzle."

She narrowed her eyes. "Is that supposed to be a compliment?"

"I'm flirting with you, of course," Adrien replied, batting his eyelashes. "Why would I ever do anything else? I'm horribly in love with you."

Marinette sniffed. "Your love is horrible, you're right."

"You're cute," he cooed, reaching out and poking her cheek. "So cute. How did I ever get so lucky?"

She batted his hand away. "When you're nice to me, it means you want something."

"I want you to kiss me," he remarked, pouting as he looked at where she'd slapped him. "But that's all the time."

Marinette's response to that was, "That's asking a bit much."

Adrien laughed. "I'll wait for you to kiss me, then."

Leaning into his side, shoulder-to-shoulder, she murmured softly, "Sorry for not telling you for so long. I just—I wanted to be sure, you know? It seemed too good to be true."

"I'm still not believing it," he replied, resting his head on top of hers. "It seems so—so out there? Like, me? Going to Heaven? That's _insane_."

"Why not you?" she countered, nudging his side. "You're literally the best of the best. That's why everyone wants to kill you."

"And why you love me," he quipped.

"That's really not why—"

"Because you _don't_ think I'm the best of the best?" he interrupted. "I don't know whether to be offended or not."

She snorted. "Perfection is impossible."

"You tell that to all those demons that lust after me," he shot back without hesitation.

"Adrien," she started slowly. "It's not lust."

"They're after my body." His body shook with his laughter. "That's lust, you can't tell me otherwise."

She laughed along with him, wheezing out, "You're an absolute idiot."

"For you," he assured her, pressing a kiss into her hair. "And I'll be like a vengeful ghost when I'm dead, haunting you. You'll never get rid of me."

It was utterly insincere when she said, "I'm terrified."

Adrien laughed. "Since that secret is out, are you going to tell me any others?"

"Do you think you deserve them?" she questioned back, teasing. "I'm not sure you do."

"Hey," he said. "I know, like, almost everything about you. I need to up that to _everything_ so I can haunt you properly."

Amused, she asked, "Well, what do you want to know?"

"You're supposed to tell me!"

"You know everything!" she exclaimed, curling into him and wrapping her arms around his waist for a half-hearted hug. "You need to be specific, otherwise you're not going to get anything."

He made a show of humming thoughtfully.

"Thinking is hard," she remarked.

He flicked her forehead. "For you, maybe."

Marinette childishly stuck her tongue out.

"Oh, I've got a good one," he finally said, hugging her back, almost putting all of his weight onto her before she whacked him to pull back enough for her to be comfortable. "Where'd you put your other sword? You know, the birthday present you promised me. I still feel slighted that you never gave it to me."

She retorted, "It doesn't work for you."

He pinched her side. "Not my question."

Marinette sniffed. "Not my problem, loser."

"Marinette," he complained, drawing out her name as he buried his face into her hair. "I'll cry if you keep being mean to me."

"I'm immune to your tears now," she proclaimed.

He made a point of fake crying.

She patted his back.

There was no quiver in his voice as he muttered, "So mean."

Marinette couldn't help but laugh. "It's in your garden."

He sat up, pulling back. "Excuse me?"

"It's in your garden," she repeated, holding up her hand to flash him a peace sign. "I buried it there when your father was adding some more flowerbeds before."

Wide-eyed and baffled, he questioned, "..._Why_?"

She shrugged. "It seemed like a good idea at the time."

"He's going to find it someday," Adrien said, incredulous.

With a grin, she replied, "That'll be fun."

"You're mad," was all he said in return to that.

Marinette laughed, pressing a kiss to his cheek. "Mad for you, yeah."


End file.
